Gardening

I haven't tried gardening yet, but the sight of 'gardening' I came and saw today is quite impressive. Looking back, in my childhood I read a great many 'field guides,' and the main ones among those guides were insect guides, plant guides, and animal guides. Curiously, those guides brought me a great deal of interest, but I don't really know why I stopped looking at those guides. Only now, looking again, do I feel the content is plentiful, but if I'd read them steadily back then, by now I think I'd be able to know more names of plants, insects, flowers, birds, and so on than I'd expect.

Here, gardening appears to be run on a one-week plan and a one-year plan. The one-year plan is broadly related to 'which plants' to plant, and the plants grown here are either sold to raise a modest income or sent to the various houses here to be used as food. Since it's a case of using right away what's made on the farm, freshness is guaranteed, and because it's grown organically and in small quantities, it's also relatively easy to manage. The reason it's hard to do organic farming on a large scale is that you have to manage one by one the things that take a lot of human hands, and in that the students take turns watering and also come to understand what 'gardening' is, it's a truly decent class.

The list of plants grown here is roughly as follows.

Onion / squash / spinach / corn / tomato / chili pepper / green onion / cabbage / garlic / carrot / purple broccoli / beans / flowers (I don't really know the names and there are many kinds, so I'll collectively call them 'flowers')

I ate freshly grown tomatoes here a few times, and my goodness, nothing could be this sweet. A tomato picked and eaten straight while still set on the vine was one of nature's finest foods, needing nothing else. For one thing, it's 'firm and springy.' Since it was just picked, naturally the ones still growing are firm and springy. Maybe that's why, when I put that tomato juice into a salad dressing, I could make a sweet-and-sour taste without needing sugar. And of course, eating it just as is, the inside is full and substantial too.

As for squash, there were three kinds—'large squash,' 'sweet squash (kabocha),' and 'zucchini squash'—and the large squash was mainly used for 'Halloween.' Seeing the jack-o'-lanterns filled with each person's creativity is a very joyful thing. I did see the sweet squash, but I couldn't use it. Inwardly I'd wanted to try making sweet-squash porridge or sweet-squash fritters and such, but it didn't come to me, so I couldn't even attempt it. The zucchini I used once for bibimbap, and I also ate a few times what other colleagues cooked, but the best was indeed for bibimbap. As for the young summer squash (aehobak), I only recall taking and using what was in the shop, so it doesn't seem to have been grown.

As for the cabbage, I never once got to 'raid' it because there was no knife - a pity. On top of that, it seems it's been a while since I ate a salad with Thousand Island dressing based on cabbage + carrot. - The green onion I never properly saw, and the garlic too I never properly saw. It's just that I'm copying down what's in the 'plan'... The carrot I took out and used once. I dug up what was buried in the soil just one time and used it, and with carrots, potatoes, and sweet-potato types, the longer it's been since they were picked the mushier they get, whereas the freshly picked ones are firm and you can feel that the texture is alive.

My mother, while growing plants, said, 'These grow as much as we put in effort.' That's right. Barring something major—that is, barring a great natural disaster—plants will usually grow well if you water them well and they get plenty of sunlight. On top of that, the fruit of it is certain. Raising children is hard, but raising plants is a manageable kind of farming when the quantity is small. They all try to grow, not to die. Here the students water, pick fruit, and in their own way gain visible results, raising their sense of efficacy. In that it grants the confidence of 'I can do it too,' I think 'gardening' is perhaps the very best activity this institution can offer.

Before returning to Korea, first I feel the need to try growing at least one herb, and then, hmm, to quickly cultivate the ability to grow and tend herbs well so that I can drink herbal tea even after going to Korea. Actually, 'joy' starts from small things. And that joy is probably something you increase slowly, even if it takes a bit of time.

2016/01/14