The Freestyle Farmer

Introduction

In a world of extreme uncertainty, there’s one ingredient that we all could use, and that is none other than self-belief.

Victor Frankl, in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, shares that even in the roughest of circumstances, you can still find hope and meaning by choosing in what you believe. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

This journey that I embarked on, the so-called unconventional path, had made me realise this truth. At many times I faced the impossible – extreme limitations, constraints, and great adversity. However, through commitment and a never-say-die attitude, it has brought out the most creative solutions and the best of humanity.

My journey in food has brought me to discover that we can truly solve some of the world’s greatest issues today such as reversing climate change through our very own actions. It is possible. And my hope is that we will see these challenges we face now as a new beginning and an opportunity to do better for all of us. We can make it happen.

Chapter 1

Surf Box Café

My journey into urban farming would never have taken off if I had not had the Surf Box Café experience in Sydney. It was in Down Under that I discovered I had the gung-ho, can-do spirit that would hold me in good stead when times got really hard in my pursuit of urban farming. More of that later. For now, you need to read about my Surf Box Café, my baby…

Three… Lester, my university friend and I lay crouched on the carpeted ground, our faces were almost touching the vintage machine in anticipation. Two…. The exhilaration was heating up; it felt like the launch of a rocket into space. We had done some rewiring, so hopefully the machine could work now. Fingers and toes were crossed. I prayed a little prayer to the God of coffee machines. One….!!!

BOOM! There was a loud explosion that happened simultaneously with a bright spark. The whole room fell into darkness. Neither of us made a sound. We lay on the floor in shock. A stinky burnt smell of melted plastic followed. The circuitry of the machine had been fried. I wondered if it was just my room that was affected. I opened the door, to my horror, the entire International House Hostel campus was in darkness. Whoops. We had just short-circuited the entire hostel. That was not the outcome we were trying to get when fixing the coffee machine. I guess looking on the bright side, we were lucky to still be alive. We could have been electrocuted.

With its glossy bright red panels and sparkling chrome-plated edges, it was love at first sight. It was a vintage work of art. And Italian-made too. But when I finally received it, the coffee machine was not at all what it was marketed to be. It was filthy, there was still ground coffee in the machine and the last user had not cleaned it out! The dials and knobs were deteriorating; the plastic from twenty-five years had started to crack, which meant the timer was not operational. It was in a horrible condition. Damn it! I will never trust eBay again! It was just too much trouble to have it shipped back to Melbourne and to have to deal with the drama of the return process. I was just going to try to fix it. With the slight technical hiccup, it was back to the drawing board. Lester, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering worked his magic. We managed to bypass the circuit board circuitry. Lo and behold, we cranked up the ancient machine, and the hot water boiler started heating up. It was working once again!

That weekend, the beast, as I called it, made its appearance in the courtyard. Its bright red bodywork stood out beautifully in the morning sun like a stunning Ferrari. It was impossible to miss.

Will, with his slightly messy blonde hair, walked over to me, barefoot. A true blue Aussie. Will was a big coffee drinker; he would down up to five cups a day, and could down as many beers as he could coffee. He was also customer number one. He had been my willing guinea pig and had taken to my coffee from when I first started. Back then, my coffees had tasted like diluted drain-water. They were watery and flavourless and lacked the soul of coffee. But Will didn’t seem to mind. To him, every coffee had been excellent. He either had a basic palette, or was simply too polite.

Strong Long Black? I asked.

You got it, he winked.

I handed over his coffee, and he went over and dropped some coins in the donation box. It was a pay-as-you-wish system.

More students streamed out of their rooms like zombies. Sleepy eyed, and still dressed in their pyjamas, they were either hung over or had pulled all-nighters for assignments. I was going to ‘caffeinate’ them all on this lazy Saturday morning.

The hostel room that I had chosen to live in was shunned for its poor location. During the room bidding, it was always available, and some poor soul had to be the unfortunate occupier. The stench of pee from the next door neighbour, that is, the Gents, was a constant irritant. No surprise, it was what you’d expect out of entitled college boys who didn’t know how to clean up after themselves. The room was also directly facing the University Gym. The biggest annoyance was the overly enthusiastic yells from the Zumba class instructors three times a week. Everybody! One and two and… Move your body! It was painfully brain-throbbing.

Despite all these distractions of noise and awful aromas, there was a charm and personality about it. It felt like a replica of a bar in a small British town. With its aged brick walls, a slightly musky-smelling maroon carpet like that of an old cinema, plus wooden shelving and a cabinet, it had an aged charm, unlike some of the more newly-renovated rooms that were sterile and soulless. I made the unconventional decision and decided to park myself there for the entire duration of my university studies.

Coffee for a student was a necessity, not a choice. It was absolutely needed to stay awake in lectures, especially at post-lunch food coma. University students had to pack homework, socialising, working, and partying into our hurried lives. Sleep was practically non-existent. The only way to make it through university was through the excessive consumption of this legal ‘drug’ – coffee.

There was also the feel-good aspect of coffee. Australian cafés were mostly cute, owner-owned passion projects. Each café was a work of art, thoughtfully pieced together to represent the owner’s personality. Cafés were places to socialise, to spend time alone reading and reflecting, just like how they were when they first sprouted in the 15th Century in the Middle East.

But coffees were pricey here. A regular latte cost $4 a pop, triple what it cost back home for our ‘kopi’ – an intense bittersweet brewed coffee that was combined with sweet condensed milk and sugar. It hurt the pocket each time I bought one. I figured, it would be more affordable if I made my own.

Levin was my buddy. Literally. We had served together in the Naval Diving Unit as part of our conscript military service. It was the somewhat easy version of the badass Navy SEALs. He was, for the most part, tied to me, arm to arm with a rope whenever we dived. He was my diving buddy whose life I depended on, and vice versa. He came together with me to Australia to do university. It was just nice to be on an adventure with someone I knew. We would have each other’s backs throughout.

We were a couple of rooms apart. After a couple of weeks of frolicking away our parents hard-earned money, it was time to put my idea to the test. We found a $100 espresso machine on an online advert. It was a brand-new Italian-made De’Longhi. The reviews were pretty decent – three out of five stars. If we made our own, it would cost us no more than $0.30 per cup. Between Levin and me, the savings from making our own coffee would have covered the cost of the machine within two weeks. It was a no-brainer.

The machine was shipped within 2 days. I had not been this excited in a long while. Upon unboxing, I was a little surprised. It was this plasticky, toy-like machine with faux metal paint. Everything was miniature compared to the commercial machines. It felt like one of those children’s make-believe kitchen toys. Nonetheless, it was still a new and exciting toy and we could not wait to make coffee! We borrowed fresh milk from the hostel’s kitchen and ground coffee beans from Lester.

As we turned on the machine to let hot water rush through the pumps, it made this strange thumping sound that went Pong! Pong! Pong! as the boiler heated up. It was as though there was a little genie in the machine hitting its thin plastic walls with a sledgehammer. After what seemed like an eternity, a dark brew ejected out from the coffee spout. The flow was viscous like honey, and it had a caramel colour. The aroma of freshly-brewed coffee filled the air. Levin and I took a sip of it. It tasted…like coffee. I didn’t know better what made a good or bad cup. I was hoping it would blow my mind. Milk frothing was next. The theory behind it was to introduce air bubbles into the milk to induce a creamy texture, and to warm the milk up to a temperature that made the drink taste sweeter and more palatable. The manual said to lower the steam wand, a short finger length stainless steel stick barely under the surface of the milk, we had to let the steam out through its tip. After a series of strange screeching sounds that sounded like a car skidding on an oily road, the jug was now too hot to handle. If it was hot enough for your hands, it was hot enough for your lips.

The manual wrote, The frothed milk should be velvety and shiny, with bubbles so fine they cannot be seen. I peered into the top of the jug. My milk had ugly, large unrefined bubbles. Ah well. I needed more practice.

After pouring the milk into the coffee, it was now a proper latte. It was pleasantly nice, warm and soothing. It wasn’t too bad at all! We savoured it slowly. It was a pretty good $100 investment.

School was somewhat interesting. I was learning about how to design rockets and send them out to space to blow up earth-destroying asteroids. In theory, it sounded cool. Most of it was just math that was repackaged as orbital paths or something like that. I hated math. I mostly had no idea what was going on in class.

Pursuing Engineering was a logical choice for me, and I could see why. From a young age I enjoyed building things with my hands. I tore apart and rebuilt remote controlled cars, a toy robot that could clean the house, and a couple of other interesting gadgets. My parents strongly ‘encouraged’ me to pursue engineering. If you come from an Asian family, you would know what I mean. And specifically, Aerospace Engineering – the highest rung of engineering. I didn’t know any better, and it kind of made sense to choose this path.

I tried to be a good student, I always showed up in classes, was attentive, and did my homework. But it was all so boring. It was math and computer software all day, all night. There was no actual building with my hands. Not the kind of tinkering and innovating that I loved doing. Gradually, my mind started drifting to something else.

How the hell could I get that milk to be velvety?

My favourite coffee was the one at the highest point of the campus. We loosely coined the term ‘Lawn Coffee.’ It was from a coffee cart that was situated outside the lawn, just in front of the library. Students would buy a cuppa and lie on the lawn, in the glorious sun. My first-ever coffee was the lawn coffee – a caramel latte. I chose something sweet to ease me into the bitter world of coffee. The coffee was smooth, so smooth like drinking cream. One day, I decided to take the plunge and went without the caramel. To my surprise, the coffee tasted like chocolate. I am not kidding. It had these cocoa and cinnamon notes, yet there was that pleasing coffee aroma. Remarkably enough, it wasn’t bitter. And there was no artificial sugar added. I wondered what sorcery it was.

Even though I had my machine now, it was nice to try other coffees to see how it compared. After having a lawn coffee, I tasted my coffee. It now tasted like piss. Not literally. There was very little coffee flavour. It was more like milk with a touch of bitterness. The milk was not even creamy.

It made me angry. It made me hungry. I had so many questions on why it wasn’t good enough. Was it the quality of the beans I used? It set me on a path to find out how to make great coffee. My benchmark was this lawn coffee. I had to be as good as that.

Coffee had two main ingredients, coffee beans and milk. My quest for excellent coffee had to start with excellent coffee beans. I rummaged through every single brand and flavour of coffee beans in the supermarket and cafés. The packaging was full of descriptors; there were different levels of body, low, medium, high. There was less acidity and more acidity. There were different formats of grind size, finely ground beans, coarsely ground beans. Different sizes were meant for different brewing equipment. Espresso needed super fine, and French Press required ground pepper-like beans. There were blends of up to fifteen different types of beans, and single origins, beans from a single estate from a single farm. There were different ways of storing the beans; in vacuum-sealed bags, bags with one-way valves, or in tins. Even how fresh your beans were apparently mattered. Some said the best time to use coffee beans was ten days after roasting; others said coffee beans could last for years if you kept them in the freezer. There were Robusta beans and 100% Arabica beans. It was head-spinning. There was simply a lot to take in. It required a Ph.D. in coffee for anyone to ever get through all the jargon. Was this information all marketing fluff? Or was every single parameter truly important to the process of coffee brewing? I had to find out.

Little by little, this fascination grew into an obsession. With each new discovery about each variable, I put my new learning into practice. I learnt that the flavours of the coffee bean could be coerced and modulated by the temperature of the water and how finely you ground the beans. This meant that the same bean could taste significantly different with the type of brewing equipment used, and the skill of the person brewing it. It was not just a beverage. It was a dynamic craft that required a huge deal of knowledge and understanding to perfect. With every bit of refinement, my coffee tasted slightly less and less horrendous, and more and more like coffee. But it still was not lawn coffee standard. I needed to push the craft further.

I signed up for a Barista Course, which taught me the fundamentals of making coffee. That was all fine, but then it still wasn’t a good enough platform to go really deep. I decided to work in a café.

Sorry mate, going for a course doesn’t mean you can make coffee. We need someone who can jump right in and push out 500 coffees a shift.

Rejection after rejection, after rejection. I applied to dozens of cafés and none would take me in, until I met someone who knew someone who owned a café in Perth, and she said it was okay for me to learn