Learning the Hard Work of Farmers and Sharing the Joy of Harvest

#1 Jo Seong-chan from Daejeon, Korea

In October, when autumn was in full swing, the young adults in Daejeon made a plan to help some farmers who were having a hard time due to a shortage of labor. Overcoming the temptation to sleep in on the weekend, more than 150 young adults hurried to a sweet potato farm and a ginseng farm in Jinan, North Jeolla Province, as well as a turmeric farm in Gyeryong, South Chungcheong Province. I went to the sweet potato farm to give a helping hand.

“Poke the soil with a trident, lift it up a couple of times, and carefully dig up the sweet potatoes with a hoe. Put all the stalks together on one corner of the furrow. Please be careful not to scrape the sweet potatoes.”

We started working after listening to the farmer’s instructions. It didn’t seem too hard at first, but it wasn’t as easy as I had thought. I had no idea how deep I needed to poke holes into the soil with the trident, and my back began to hurt soon after I started digging up the sweet potatoes because I was squatting the whole time. The sweet potato farm didn’t look that big, but it was a never-ending task because there were so many sweet potatoes in rows too close to each other in the field. I felt very sorry whenever I cut or bruised a sweet potato although I was very careful. Yet, the elderly farmer and his wife still wore a satisfied smile.

It was lunch time soon, and the farmer’s wife cooked kimchi stew in an iron pot on wood-burning stove. We brought our own lunch not to bother her, but she made it herself and said, “How can I not cook for you like my grandchildren when you have come to help us?” Then she gave each of us a bowl of delicious stew. The food we ate after working hard tasted really good. The farmer’s wife, who had been watching us eat from a distance, said with a smile on her face, “It’s like a festival!”

It would have been an ordinary weekend spent meaninglessly if we had rested at home. It was a festival to us, too, because we helped our neighbors by working hard with beads of sweat on our foreheads, which strengthened the love between our brothers and sisters of Zion.

#2 Lee Jin-ah from Daejeon, Korea

Turmeric is a herbaceous plant of the ginger family. It is used for medicine or dried for tea. I came to know its existence through this volunteer opportunity; it really looked like ginger as it’s from the ginger family.

Turmeric is a root vegetable, and it has to be pulled from the roots when harvested. To make it easier for us to work, the elderly farmer couple had already pulled everything out and cut the stems, too. Thanks to them, we just had to shake off the dirt and put them in sacks. This was still hard though.

The field of over four acres was filled up with turmeric. With gloves on, we shook off the dirt, put the turmeric in sacks, and tied them up once they were full; we repeated it all day. Our throats were itchy because of the dust in the wind, and our legs hurt as we were sitting down and standing up repeatedly. We checked every corner of the dirt carefully looked at the dusty ground not to miss any pieces of turmeric and picked them diligently.

At around sunset, we stood up and looked back at the field we’d walked across. Hundreds of white turmeric sacks looked grand, reflecting the sunlight. I was overwhelmed by the thought that it was the fruit of the farmer couple’s hard word throughout the year.

As we were getting ready to leave, they expressed their gratitude to every one of us. We were more thankful, because they helped us feel the joy of harvest as well as the heart of God who brings good fruit of the gospel into the heavenly barn, as the spiritual Farmer.