Life in Korea – farming anyone?

Here’s another reason why I have not been able to blog more often..suddenly I’m now helping my family take care of this farm in Korea.

Great River Farm… that’s the name of the farm that our family has owned for over 40 years. My dad had a full time job in the government but running this farm was his passion in the hopes of retiring someday and living on this farm. Unfortunately, he passed away before this became a reality. So my mom has been managing the farm so far on her own for the last 20+ years but now that I’m here, I offered to help her out because I just love being there. I love how the air smells, how green everything is and how every time you look around, something is different – flowers bloom and fade and fruits appear and grow.

Just as my mom said, I guess it’s in the genes. My grand father owned a huge farm in North Korea before the war. My dad rode horses to get around to inspect the farm because it just took too long to walk from one end to the other. Anyway, so I guess the farming and the horse genes got passed down me? Too bad I can’t ride horses here.. 🙂

When I was young, my dream was to own a farm and ride horses. Now my dream has changed somewhat and become more specific – to own an organic farm in the US somewhere, grow Korean fruits and vegetables and share them with people, along with Korean food recipes. It’s only been about 3 months since I started working but I now have so much more respect for farmers. The incredible amount of work they have to do and how vigilant they have to be about everything – it’s simply amazing.

So, what do we have in the farm? We have quite a big orchard of Korean Shingo pears, fuji apples and peaches.

We also have several Maesil (매실) trees which I just harvested to make some Maesil syrup. Maesil (Japanese apricot plum or Chinese plum) are in full season and people buying them from stores to make syrup at home.

I will be posting the recipe for that very soon because I made a batch myself.

In addition, we wanted to grow some vegetables to make more profit this year. Colored potatoes (blue, red, red skinned)

are the latest thing in Korea as well as US, so with the help from the local farming organization, we decided to plant and grow these  potatoes using no pesticides and no herbicides. But I can’t say it’s fully organic yet since the land has to be chemical free for few years before it is officially certified organic.

I know potato is not your unique Korean vegetable but it’s supposed to be one of the easiest crops to grow, so with the advice from the local farmers, I decided to start easy.

If you search on the internet, you will find that these purple and red potatoes have great health benefits. They have large amount of antioxidants and is anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, lowers blood pressure and helps with obesity. So, if you can get these potatoes where you live, you should definitely give these a try!

We hope to harvest them in late July. Hopefully we can sell them all – so wish me luck!!