Naturalist intelligence
The week before the Lunar New Year, I decided to leave Seoul to WWOOF at a goat farm tucked in Yeongwol Valley. WWOOF stands for “Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms” and is an international network for cultural and educational exchange. When the program first started in 1970s England, it was “Working Weekends on Organic Farms,” a way for city folks to reconnect with the land.
For a membership fee of $50, you gain access to a directory of the country’s organic farms in Korean and English. In exchange for room and board, you offer your labor for a few days, weeks or even months.
I chose this goat farm for one week based on its photographs and the promise of three home-cooked meals a day. Its profile featured adorable goats and houses made of "hwangto" yellow earth, resembling Hobbit homes from “The Lord of the Rings.” It turned out the farmer had built these houses, working off aesthetic instinct.
I arrived during the most biting days of winter, just three weeks after six baby goats were born. In the cutting cold, some frolicked while others shivered. One baby goat, a kid that frequently wandered away from her worried mother, bore scars of the season: Her ears were frostbitten, staying floppy and bent instead of pointed like the others’. Another kid had lost her mom to a difficult labor. To keep her alive, the farmer and his wife bottle-fed her or covered the eyes of the other nursing goats so she could steal a meal, wagging her tail as she suckled. I spent the majority of my time cuddling her or watching as she dozed next to the wood-burning stoves.
Over instant coffee, I learned from the farmer that WWOOF is how the world comes to Yeongwol Valley. This farm attracts travelers mostly from France, who come with some knowledge of goats, cheese-making and the luxury of a gap year. The WWOOFer who stayed the longest was a Hong Konger who stayed about three months. With the help of many WWOOFers, the farmer constructed five eco-houses, replete with traditional woodwork and stoves. His property is so remarkable, it has been featured on every major Korean broadcast station, including EBS, KBS, MBC.
Americans like me were rare as guests. When I asked what he thought of my compatriots, he answered, “They don’t work hard.” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at his bluntness.
Knowing I was interested in edible greens, the farmer’s wife produced a parade of delicious wild vegetables with a casual and knowing ease. She introduced me to pickled Siberian onion leaves, "myeongi jangajji," and "nungaeseungma," a mountain herb indigenous to Gangwon Province. The farmer didn’t know that in English, the plant is called “goat’s beard,” a fitting name for the spray of white flowers.
Day by day, there were new treasures in the kitchen: at breakfast, a warm mug of goat’s milk. One afternoon, a golden-hued tea brewed from a special flower that only blooms at night. Rice that they grew and threshed, soy sauce she brewed, eggs from their white silkie chickens with striking black skin and snowy feathers. We snacked on foraged gingko seeds and chestnuts roasted in a pine-fueled wood-burning stove.
The farmer and his wife wore their many talents lightly. To them, traditional Korean agriculture and architecture wasn’t frozen in a museum — it was living here matter-of-factly. At the dining table, I studied both their hands, thickened and knobby with decades of chopping, building and tilling. Mine were hands so obviously accustomed to the lighter labor of tapping a keyboard and pushing a pencil.
To build and make a home takes immense skill and labor. While I thought his ability to construct homes, benches and tables from wood was exceptional, he explained with some sadness, “In the past, most of us were farmers. We got as far as an elementary school education. Even if we wanted to continue learning, we couldn’t afford middle school tuition. Craftsmen like me are considered lower class. I work off memory. The homes, made of wattle and daub, are like what I lived in as a child. You learned by copying and by doing.”
His wife shared a similar story. She grew up in the countryside before living and working in Seoul, where they met. She swore she would never return because of how hard the work was, but here she was. “I’d seen my mom do all this, but I never learned to make meju (dried fermented soy beans) or gochugaru (red pepper powder). In Seoul, I didn’t do it or know how. It was only after Seoul. Once we moved here, the village grannies taught me. It’s not hard, you know,” she promised. “It’s not hard.”
Life once dictated that people know how to perform these tasks. Korea has evolved at a breakneck pace to prize artificial intelligence and test-taking, but I’m reminded of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, which contrasts with the narrow view of intelligence as text-bound. Living in their self-sufficient home, I saw this in practice.
This naturalist intelligence — the ability to read, survive, relate to and navigate a landscape when the Wi-Fi signal dies — is fundamental. In an age of crisis, learning how to build a sustainable shelter from the earth isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia; it is a practice worth relearning.
Esther Kim is a writer from New York. She is a guest columnist for The Korea Times. The opinions and conclusions presented here, though shared with many seekers, are her own.