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Messy Farm
Everything was strewn across the placeI landed Wednesday afternoon May 21st on Jeju International airport and was greeted by sub tropic temperatures and palm trees. Jeju Island the southern most island of Korea really seemed to live up to its nae "Hawaii of Korea". This was the first time for me to be on this favorite vacation spot among Korean honeymooners as I would usually spend my time in Seoul on business trips. Jeju is of volcanic origin with a massive volcanic mountain, Mount Halla, dominating the centre of the island. Mount Halla, Korea's highest mountain with just under 2000m altitude is accompanied by over 350 smaller volcanic eruptions (hills and small mountains) called oreums which are spread all over Jeju. The island is said to have an abundance of three things: stones, wind and women. You have massive amounts of stones indeed which the Jeju people, most of them farmers in the past, would pile up to form walls. The walls would mark the territory, keep them form the fields and protect against the strong winds which come in abundantly from the sea. As for women , it used to be that many men would go out fishing and would not return from the rough
Tangerine Trees
Tangerine trees seas. So there would be a surplus of men, which would make men, kings of the island. Yeah, the good old times ;-) Nowadays the local economy lives of fishing, farming and tourism. Roughly 600tsd people live here mostly concentrated in the two cities of Jeju City (north) and Seogwipo City (south).
On Jeju I first stayed with a farmer and his family who had an apartment in Jeju City and the farm a 20 min ride from there. The farm is fairly small, roughly the size of 2 football fields with tangerine trees on it which would blossom now but would not yield fruit until November. In addition the farmer would raise indigenous black pigs and chicken. The first time arrived at the farm I wouldn't believe my eyes. Literally the whole farm was littered with lumber, stoners, feed baskets, trash and so forth. Turns out farmer Lee was somewhat of a non orderly person and had the habit of collecting old things (some people call it trash :-)) he thought he could use later. In addition he had a hard time throwing out stuff. As my orderly German induced mentality leaked through I started cleaning up the
place as we were expecting a local Jeju school class on a field trip for Saturday. We somehow succeeded at bringing a certain structuring to the place also thanks to farmer Lee's excavator skills. His apartment by the way is a super cleaned up place, but his wife runs the show there. They told me they had an agreement that his wife would be in command of everything at home and in return farmer Lee could do whatever he wanted on the farm. If it wouldn't be for this agreement they would need to divorce each other they said with a wink.
Saturday arrived and students from local middle schools (many of them with a disadvantaged family background) came to spend a few hours on the farm. Farmer Lee had asked me to give a short speech about myself, my background and my travel plans. Most of the kids had never left Jeju Island and according to farmer Lee they this would give them an idea that there is more to hte world than Jeju island. I happily obliged as they were in the same age range as my church youth group from back home. In the beginning they
would not believe that I was from Germany (you don't look German and you speck Korean, you must be lying...) but I convined them with my charm and my bad Korean language skills. Farmer Lee als had them prepare there own lunch that was hand rolled buckwheat noodles in a chicken brooth.
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Ben K
non-member comment
Finally U R getting your hands dirty...
Hi there, hope u r doing well. I heard korean society is strongly shaped by farmers and their wifes... hmm.. thanks for utting up this site. will be informal. i'll keep checking it. Eat well. Sleep well. Work well. Let HIM be Lord. cu