Just arrived in Seoul, Korea and now live at the Green Scent Farm, a peri-urban organic farm with vegetable production and farm exposure programs for children and consumers from Seoul.
On my first night on the farm I was treated to a large traditional Korean barbecue with the whole family. Complete with a few different species of native plants and some heavy Korean schnapps. I am here working for the Korean Federation of Sustainable Agriculture Organizations (KFSA) one of the many organizers of the IFOAM Organic World Congress (IFOAM OWC).
The IFOAM OWC (titled: 'Organic is Life') will take place in Gyeonggi Paldang in early October. The organizers are several government institutes and non-profit organizations.
The event will also be the 3rd Scientific Conference of the International Society of Organic Agriculture Research (ISOFAR) looking at the development of the Organic Sector in Korea and other Asian countries.
For now I am working on getting rid of my jet-lag and getting into the swing of life in Seoul.
For balance, here is a Poem from Wendell Berry's Farming: A Handbook
The Man Born to Farming
The Grower of Trees, the gardener,
the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout to him the soil is a divine drug.
He enters into death yearly, and comes back rejoicing.
He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark.
