I am an editorial writer at The Korea Times, focusing on foreign policy, North Korea and domestic politics. My key areas of interest include North Korea, foreign interference in elections, election integrity, cyberattacks and human rights. Prior to joining the Editorial Board, I served as both Politics Desk editor and Culture Desk editor. During my career, I have reported on the Presidential Office under the Lee Myung-bak administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Assembly.
Potato farmer
Potato tubers / Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Wisdom that I learned from farm work
There is generations-old wisdom that still resonates with today’s farmers: Crops ripen as they hear the footsteps from their owners. The adage holds true. The more farmers drop by their farmlands and take care of their crops, the better products they would harvest.
Farming is challenging yet rewarding. It requires a great deal of physical labor. Automation has changed the farming scene a lot and saved farmers from manual labor. But there are still small farmers like me who rely entirely on manual work to grow vegetables and fruits. Sowing seeds and seed plants, watering, weeding, pruning and fertilizing, all these require intensive physical work. I wrestle with back pain whenever I work on the farm.
Despite this tough nature of farm work, farming benefits people a lot. Farming helps people lead a self-sufficient healthy lifestyle. It also helps people have a healthy diet.
Around this time of the year is probably the best season for farmers. I feel that my previous months of hard work pay off as I begin to yield some of my products. Last weekend, I harvested lettuce, potatoes, pumpkins and perilla leaves, and cooked them for meals. The dishes made with locally sourced fresh and healthy ingredients delighted my taste buds.
Farming also helps people who are tired of bustling urban life during weekdays to build mental resilience.
This year, growing potatoes has become my newest passion.
Potato farmers start their farm work in early spring when the weather is still cold. They plant seed potatoes in late February or early March, depending on the region, to meet the harvest deadline of the summer solstice which falls on June 21 this year. It usually takes 90 to 110 days to grow potatoes, depending on the type.
In Korea, potato growing season is closely linked to the nation’s unique weather conditions. The summer monsoon season begins shortly after the summer solstice, and soil gets wet and muddier as the rainy season extends for weeks. Therefore, if not harvested before the downpours begin, potato tubers growing under the soil go bad, which makes them inedible.
When I decided to grow potatoes on my farm, the March deadline had already passed. But I chose to go for growing potatoes. I planted seed potatoes in the corner of my farm on April 6. Weeks later, they sprouted, became leafy green and the vines flowered around mid-May. Small white flowers blown here and there over the green potato stems created a beautiful rural scene. Following advice from farmers who share their tips on YouTube, I pruned and nurtured the potato plants with home-made natural fertilizers.
Every weekend, I watered them to keep them growing fast and thriving under the sunny sky.
As the potato vines became resilient, I was curious how the tubers underneath the soil would look. Would they also be as prosperous as the upper parts of the plants above the soil?
Irresistible to find an answer to this question, I pulled up a couple of sample potato tubers last Saturday, a week before I am scheduled to harvest on June 23.
Potato flowers / Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung
The results were amazing. When I carefully pulled the first potato tuber up by using a farming tool called “homi,” more than 10 potatoes were growing. Their sizes were different but all of them were smaller than potatoes that are on sale at stores. I touched their skin and tried to peel it off to find out whether they were firm enough. Although they were small, I found out they were firm. Small but strong potatoes! I pulled two more potato stems to see if they were as prolific as the first one, only to find the developmental status of each potato is different and the number of potatoes I got also varied.
Those potato samples that I harvested were 70 days old, which means they had 20 more days to be fully grown and harvested. It was natural that mine were smaller and premature.
Farming taught me about greed. I realized that potatoes are a reflection of the time and energy farmers had put in to growing them. If you sow seeds timely and work hard to take care of your potatoes properly, they will grow well. I sowed seed potatoes weeks later than other farmers. If I still expect my crops would be as good as potatoes that were planted weeks earlier which have much more time to grow and ripen, this means I am greedy. I learned this lesson while working part-time on a farm. And I was determined to be thankful no matter what.
The author is a Korea Times editoral writer.