Endeavour Shen checks the leafy greens that thrive at Sundial Farm. The plants grow in nutrient- rich water rather than soil, in a hydroponic growing system Shen constructed from PVC pipes, right.
The boys moved in with distant relatives in Miami, who changed Shen’s name from Shen Yen Ting to the Americanized “Jef f ” and put him to work at a restaurant they owned. The brothers ended up sleeping in a closet at the restaurant until the group moved to Illinois. When Shen’s brother took the family car for a joy ride, the angry relatives sent the older boy back to Taiwan and soon returned to Taiwan themselves, leaving Shen alone in the house. He was 11, and lived alone for two years. “I had to learn to cook at a young age, do my own laundry and walk to school,” Shen said. “It was bad during Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays.” There was a part of Shen that wanted to succeed for his parents, who’d sought a better life for him in America. So, he endured. After living alone in Illinois, Shen spent time with a family in Texas and was on his own again at 17. When he was 21, the events of 9/11 prompted him to enlist in the military. The U.S. Navy sent him to Iraq, where he trained to be a Navy SEAL and sought citizenship. A back injury thwarted his SEAL dream, but not his dream of citizenship. During the naturalization ceremony, Shen was told he could pick any name he
wanted. He chose Endeavour because he was reading a book about British navigator James Cook and his explorations aboard the HMS Endeavour. He became Endeavour Shen, U.S. citizen. Learning to farm Shen is new to farming. During his four years in the Navy, he worked as a religious program specialist, assisting chaplains, followed by civilian work as an accountant while selling real estate on the side. Although he was moving billion-dollar accounts, Shen said he was tired of “looking at numbers all day” and ready to move from the corner office to hands-on farming. “I just wanted to be able to go outside,” he said. “Being in the military, you just want to be outdoors more often and be able to touch things and do things.” Shen’s military service offered him the GI Bill and the opportunity to take a four-month night class on hydroponic farming taught by an ex-Marine under the Archi’s Acres program for military veterans. Shen started small, by growing basil. He soon needed more land and ended up buying South Coast Orchids from the man who’d owned the business for 38 years. There was one problem: Shen knew nothing about orchids.
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January/February 2021
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