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A junior pharmacist who was also a high school classmate sent a package of herbal medicine by courier, wishing me a smooth recovery after hip surgery. Last Sunday he offered to buy us a meal, so my wife and I met him at a seafood restaurant while I leaned on crutches. Some pharmacists and fellow writers visited me at Seongnam Hospital and even sent consolation money, but gestures like these—made on behalf of a surgical patient rather than a family member—are rare. When old friends feel guilty about not visiting, they sometimes arrange a meal instead; that thoughtfulness alone means a great deal. All of these bonds trace back to ties we’ve built through our crops.
Three years ago, this younger colleague suffered the heartbreak of losing an ankle. When I first visited and pushed his wheelchair, his heels were still there. Later, during outpatient treatment, his inflammation worsened and he was fitted with a prosthesis. The moment I heard, tears blurred my vision. I couldn’t accept seeing him shoulder a disability, wracked by anguish and grief.
Now he worries about my health, but what truly torments him is the impatience of being unable to work the fields for two months. The last time he went to the garden, holding a crutch in each hand, he had no free hand left to do anything. He should have cleared the winter brush earlier and replenished the hungry soil with compost and fertilizer. My wife, who went with me to the plot, took pity: she brushed away the leaves that had covered the scallions, onions and garlic, then warned me about the strain on my back. Yesterday, after picking fresh chives and mugwort, she hauled a roll of black plastic and a toolbox from the shed to the furrows and, lying on her side, made patch repairs.
Friends tell me to stop pushing my body so hard and to hire help. Some chide me: why bother when you can buy cheap produce at the market? They remind me that farming isn’t our only livelihood and urge me to let it go.
I can’t. Farming is my exercise and my way of sharing food with neighbors. Chasing faint memories of my grandfather and mother, I used to go out to the fields at dawn and return by noon. Even when my body ached, I swallowed painkillers like candy—twenty years passed that way.
The crops a farmer gives are not merely vegetables. They are treasures stained with my sweat, my tears, the sound of my footsteps and my care. Driven by the joy of giving, I spent long hours tending the land, not noticing that the hip inflammation I’d had since infancy was flaring up. A farmer does not have the luxury or the nerve to pick only the perfect produce. They say by May—three months after surgery—my bones should be set. Even if they aren’t fully healed and I find myself collapsing to the ground while hoeing, I will plant again so I can share food with the neighbors who have helped me. I do it to keep those precious ties alive for as long as I live.
/Kim Sa-yeon, essayist and former president of the Incheon Writers’ Association
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