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- Our Temporary House
About10 minutes outside a small city was a tiny, old village we called home for two short weeks. One morning, while sipping tea on the front porch, we heard a strange hissing sound. A pungent odor crept from the house next door: The neighbors were scorching the hair off a dead goat with a modified blow torch! (You might be a redneck if...)
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- Inside the House
After an afternoon spent cleaning, the place was quite livable. Only a few minor inconveniences like no flushing toilet, no running water and an intermittent gas range.
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- Meal Time
Some days we cooked for ourselves, though we never tried goat...
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- Meal Time
But on special days, the goat-roasting neighbors dropped by to give us some multigrain rice, rice drink and various roots and vegetables.
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- The Work
I spent my first few days in the cold and wind helping build these three greenhouses. Me and four others covered the football field-sized structures with huge rolls of plastic, then we strapped the plastic down with hundreds of ropes! You get to know a place pretty well when you measure the rate of construction by the inch...
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- The Work
Karen spent her working days inside the greenhouse planting hundreds of seeds, one by one. Here she is with the farm owner, Mr Choi.
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- Enough Work!
After complaining to Mr. Choi that we thought we were volunteering much too hard, he started taking us on tours. In the few moments when he was not managing his farm, Mr. Choi stayed busy as the president of the local farming community organization, promoting tourism in his city, and running his own tour company for which he drives his own bus. He guided us all over the province.
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- Let's Go!
And so the tours began...
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- On Tour
Though not without a bumpy start.
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- Totems
At our first stop we met a man who carved traditional Korean totem poles that are placed outside of businesses for good luck. He also grew green tea on his farm and raised sinewy korean pine trees (not to be confused with the straight, japanese pine trees).
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- Totems
Sure to scare anything away...
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- What is a Dolmen?
A dolmen is an enormous boulder marking an ancient grave. Traditionally, Koreans moved these monoliths by rolling them along tree trunks. Pretty impressive.
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- More Dolmens
(Picture taken moments before I put on my climbing shoes.)
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- Temple Roof
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- Lunch Time
Twice we were taken to lunch at a country house in a neighboring village. The owners, this sweet old couple, scuttled around serving large, delicious meals of vegetables and soups.
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- The Curious Onlooker
In the courtyard of the country restaurant, the family cow watched wearily as people tried to force it to eat uncut hay.
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- Good Luck?
Curiously enough, totem poles are not the only symbol of good luck.
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- The Yangban
One afternoon, we took a trip to where the Yangban, or upper-class, used to live.
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- The Yangban
The Yangban grounds were measured not in acres or feet but in the number of servants they housed. This one housed ninety-nine.
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- Kimchi Pots
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- Kimchi Pots
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- Stone Rice Bowls
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- Earth Dyed Cloth
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- Dyeing the Cloth
One Day Mr. Choi asked us if we were wearing white underwear. Since he hadn't told us to bring cloth to dye, He figured we could just take off our undies, dye them and dry them, then put them back on! Since we hadn't worn our tighty whiteys, we were given white linen handkerchiefs to colour with natural Earth.
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- The Final Products of Dyed Cloth
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- The Final Products of Dyed Cloth
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- Off to the Boat Races
And then quite randomly we were racing makeshift catamarans around a lake in the middle of nowhere. Our boat lost, if you were wondering.
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- Crafts
Next stop on the tour was a little school where we learned how to make sandals from dried rice stalks. In a matter of minutes, I became completely frustrated. Karen stuck with it and walked out of there with one beautiful traditional shoe.
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- Cooking
After the shoe fiasco, I headed for the kitchen to learn how to make noodles from scratch; much more practical than making shoes which would only last about a day.
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- The End
We ate the noodles, the tour finished and we headed back to our temporary abode. The next day we said goodbye to Mr. Choi, the farm and the cozy little house in the valley. In the end it was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about Korea and even more about myself.
WWOOFing stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. The idea; help out a few hours a day on a farm and in return be provided with a room to sleep in and meals. We decided to WWOOF in Korea for a number of reasons. One, we had about 3 weeks to kill and we didn't have the money nor the inclination to pay for a hotel. Two, we wanted to experience a different part of Korea outside of the English teaching world. We also wanted to practice our Korean, meet some new people and have a good time.
Our first choice was to WWOOF on a pottery "farm" near the city we would be teaching in. In exchange for room and board, you would have the opportunity to learn pottery and help out in the studio. This option was not available in the winter, nor were the 50 other farms that were listed in the guide book. The WWOOF headquaters said that there was one farm that had openings, so that's where we went.
Gurye City is in a southern province of South Korea and butts up against Jiri mountain, the second highest mountain and first national park in Korea. It provided a beautiful backdrop for our experience "on the farm".
