What am I thinking about lately?

Farming! Yes, farming. I don't know. It's an idle thought and desire I've had since I was little quite honestly. I used to read a lot of books about settler life or just living back when there wasn't a lot of industrialization and would imagine how I'd like to farm. Not huge, mind you, something small scale and sustainable. Like my own eggs/chicken, a little vegetable garden, maybe a milk cow and a pig or two? While most people probably enjoyed "Charlotte's Web" for its heartfelt tale about the love and friendship between a spider and a pig, and a pig and a girl, I kind of devoured the details of farm life. I still remember the detailed descriptions of Wilbur's slop, including the small bit about how there was some cheese still stuck to a wrapper being part of his meal.

I don't know. I still think about it and lately it's looming more and more over my head. One of my favorite shows to watch on the one Korean channel I get on cable happens to be "Diary of Returning to the Farm." I guess in Korea nowadays there's a lot of people giving up life in the city and retiring to farms. Besides that show, there's a lot of bits of stories I see about that type of retirement as well as little news stories about towns that offer people money if they want to move there and start farming. It kind of makes me wish I was back home so that it would be an option.

Besides that, there's another show called "Country Table," which I absolutely love because it combines the whole country small-scale farming lifestyle with cooking! Korean cooking! Basically, the hosts visit different old folks living out in the country and cook a meal with them, which not only means cooking with ingredients they usually farm and grow themselves, but you also get plenty of recipes, tips and hints for a lot of "how mom used to make it" type of regional and simple Korean foods. In fact, I really want to make the the chilled chrysanthemum leaf soup (mmmmmmm...I can already imagine how that would smell and taste in my mouth) from one episode.

I was watching an episode today and they went out to the field to pick some peppers, a head of cabbage as well as a watermelon or two to make a meal. I wish I could do that...In fact, I do wish I could leave in a old-fashioned Korean house with the kitchen with the huge cooking fire to make rice in a kamasot pot and have an area out front or back for all my huge clay jars of homemade soy sauce, dwaenjang and gochujang. That'd be so awesome.

Random story time: So when my mom was younger one day there was a huge SPLASH!!! then some smaller splishing and splashing noises out in the front yard, and her and my grandmother went to go check on what it was. A rat had fallen into a huge jar of soy sauce and was trying to swim out. It drowned though, and they had to pour out a whole jar and make soy sauce all over again. For those of you who don't understand why the splash was so big and a rat could drown in it, it's because we're talking about a set up like this. Some of these pots come up to your waist and are big and deep. And you'd have a couple out front where you make your own condiments like soy sauce, and you even store kimchi in (bury the kimchi one in the ground in the winter).

But yea, I guess there's like programs where you can go around the States and work on farms. Or even go abroad and farm. Obviously, not to rake in the money, and it is hard work...but so tempting. I've always liked working with my hands. Building stuff, doing stuff. I don't know, maybe it's time to take a break from cranial labor and move on to do some manual stuff while I'm still young.

Oh, man. So I've been listening to way too much bachata the past couple of days. It's all MTV's fault too. I was flipping through channels, and they were playing Aventura for Hispanic Heritage Month. And I was all "AAAAHHHH, omg! That sounds like the old neighborhood!!!" So I've been on an Aventura kick.

Like this song, which I heard like every other day in stores, walking past open windows, from cars in all its covers and incarnations:


The song on MTV that started this whole thing: