Episode 21: Angel
“Are you feeling okay?”
“I can’t stay in the hospital any longer. I’m getting antsy.”
Mandeogi was discharged yesterday. I told him he ought to stay a few more days, but he said he was fine.
“Still, rest a few more days. What if you have aftereffects?”
“No, I need to start preparing for rice planting now. If I rest any longer, it’ll be a disaster.”
Right now, the village was in an uproar preparing for rice planting. While Mandeogi was in the hospital, his father had probably been preparing, but he must have been feeling uneasy about it.
“But is it okay for me to go with you today?”
Hearing that we were going to Hyungnim’s sweet potato farm today, he decided to come along.
“It’s fine. Your car got wrecked because of me, so I’ll be your driver.”
Even though I said I was fine, he seemed to keep worrying about the truck being smashed.
“Alright, let’s go.”
I climbed into his truck. He started the engine and headed for the sweet potato farm, then casually asked me.
“How did looking at cars go?”
“Cars? I signed the contract for that pickup truck you mentioned.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, they said they’re having some kind of event, so if I do it now I can get the car quickly.”
Mandeogi seemed quite surprised; he apparently hadn’t expected me to sign so quickly.
“Really? When is it coming?”
“I think next week?”
“Oh, that’s fast.”
“The pickup truck seemed fine, just like you said.”
“Right, it’s not bad for driving around the countryside. If you have a lot to load and need a truck, tell me. I’ll lend you our car.”
We had talked about this before.
“Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need it.”
“Sure. But what car did you buy?”
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t told him the model yet.
“It’s called a Gladiator. Have you heard of it?”
Screeeech.
As soon as we started talking about cars, Mandeogi suddenly slammed on the brakes and pulled the truck over to the side of the road.
“You bought what?”
“A Gladiator.”
At my words, Mandeogi took out his phone and searched, then showed it to me.
“Is this it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“This is a seventy-million-won car. You bought this?”
“Uh… I used some saved money and took out installments to buy it.”
Mandeogi looked at me like I was crazy. Well, it was understandable. A guy who had just returned to farming with no income had bought such an expensive car.
If I told him I won the lottery, he would understand, but I couldn’t tell Mandeogi about that either.
“I can’t say much since I wrecked your car, but didn’t you go overboard?”
Mandeogi spoke with concern, so I just brushed it off.
“If I do well with sweet potato farming, I can pay it back, right?”
“How much do you think you’ll earn from sweet potatoes on a thousand pyeong… Don’t do that. Instead, come help with rice planting at our house. I can’t pay you much, but I’ll give you a daily wage.”
Mandeogi seemed worried about me, but I was really fine.
“No, Mandeogi. I’m fine. I have some money saved.”
“Even if you say you have money saved, I feel bad thinking you’re spending it because of me. I’ll call you when I have work, so let’s do it together. You don’t have to feel sorry.”
“I really… am fine…”
I kept saying I was fine, but it didn’t reach Mandeogi’s ears.
Mandeogi’s head seemed to be filled with finding me work, so I thought I’d have to make up an excuse later.
****
“Hyungnim, we’re here.”
Mandeogi and I arrived at Gu Sangho Hyungnim’s sweet potato farm, where rotary tilling was in full swing in his field.
A large tractor was moving here and there, working the field. Perhaps because the driver was skilled, he was plowing exactly according to the shape of the field.
“Wow, is all of this your field, Hyungnim?”
“We have our own fields and other people’s fields too.”
Mandeogi spoke while looking at the field spread out before him, and Gu Sangho replied as if it was no big deal.
I had thought my thousand-pyeong field was quite large. But arriving here and seeing the vast field, mine was nothing.
“Exactly how many pyeong is this place?”
“Well… if you combine all the sweet potato fields we manage, it’s about twenty thousand pyeong.”
Twenty thousand pyeong.
It was twenty times the size of the field I owned. I was amazed at the enormous size, but also wondered how hard it must be to plant sweet potatoes over all of this.
“Hyungnim, you’ll need a lot of people to plant sweet potatoes here, right?”
“We need plenty. We have a sweet potato planting machine, so that’s fine, but we’ll need people later when we harvest.”
“But what exactly is the work being done now?”
I asked Hyungnim about the work, and he said they were rotary tilling to make the ridges.
Sweet potatoes are planted using seedlings called sweet potato vines on ridges covered with plastic mulch. After evenly tilling the land like this, you have to make the ridges.
I had done some rough studying about sweet potato farming whenever I had time, but the method of making ridges was somewhat different from when making a vegetable garden.
“Like this, the tractor digs furrows, and later we cover them with plastic using a tiller.”
“It would be hard without a tiller.”
“Of course. In the old days, we did all of this with hoes. You have no idea how hard it was. Just thinking about it makes my back hurt even now.”
A tiller is farm machinery that digs deep furrows, automatically piling up the dug soil into ridges, making it essential for crops that require furrows and ridges like this.
Good farm machinery saves time and labor, so if you can afford it, it’s good to have one.
“But if you’re planting sweet potato vines here, you’ll need a lot of seedlings… Where do you get them?”
“Ah, follow me.”
This time, Hyungnim took us to a large vinyl greenhouse, where an enormous amount of sweet potato vines were growing.
“These are sweet potatoes we planted for seed stock. We’ll take the vines that grow here and transplant them to that field.”
I had thought you buy seedlings from places like agricultural supply stores or seedling shops.
But since they had grown sweet potatoes here last year too, it seemed they planted seed stock and produced them themselves.
“There was a method like this.”
“Minwu, you haven’t gotten your seedlings yet, right?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Want to take some from here and plant them? I’ll give them to you cheap.”
“I would be grateful.”
I had been planning to get sweet potato vines anyway. Since Hyungnim said he’d give them cheap, buying them here didn’t seem bad.
“How big did you say your field was?”
“It’s about a thousand pyeong.”
“Normally, we charge five hundred thousand won for enough vines for three hundred pyeong. Just make it an even million.”
If things went as Hyungnim said, I would have had to pay over one and a half million won for seedlings, so I was saving money.
“Thank you.”
“I’d like to give them cheaper, but we have the cost of the seed potatoes that went into them, so that’s difficult.”
“No, it’s more than enough.”
We had only met once for a meal, but Hyungnim treated me so well. I had declined joining the cooperative because I wasn’t planning on doing large-scale sweet potato farming yet, but Hyungnim said it was fine.
“I’ll buy you a delicious dinner later.”
“That sounds good too.”
“But if you plant this much, you’ll get a lot of sweet potatoes. Where do you store them?”
“We have a storage warehouse run by our cooperative. Sorting and packing are done there too. I’ll show you.”
Since I was here, I wanted to see the whole system, and Hyungnim gladly gave us a tour.
“Wow, the warehouse is huge.”
“All the produce from the cooperative has to fit in here, so of course it’s big.”
We entered the large warehouse, where there were storage facilities and even conveyor belts for sorting.
Mandeogi and I were looking around the warehouse under Hyungnim’s guidance when someone approached and greeted us.
“Hello, Hyungnim.”
He was a young man. Seeing him, Gu Sangho introduced him to us.
“Ah, this is Jeong Himchan, who works as an employee at our cooperative.”
“Hello. I’m Jeong Himchan.”
He greeted us, and just as I was about to greet him too, my eyes went to his hand.
Because his left hand, which should obviously have been there, was not visible. Mandeogi seemed to have seen it too and greeted him awkwardly.
“Uh… Hello. I’m Song Minho, living in Okcheon-myeon.”
“I’m Lee Minu, living in the same neighborhood.”
I also greeted him awkwardly, following Mandeogi, and seeing this, Gu Sangho explained.
“He was injured working at a factory in the past. Now he’s down in Haenam saving up money to return to farming. He sorts and packs goods for our cooperative’s home shopping. Even with one hand, he’s much faster than others.”
“Oh, no. I’m just working hard so I don’t fall behind others.”
The man named Jeong Himchan smiled brightly; he seemed like a good person. And I felt sorry for acting awkward earlier.
Just then, someone entered the warehouse and shouted.
“Can I buy sweet potatoes here?”
“Yes, we sell them.”
It was a family who had come to buy sweet potatoes. Hearing the shout, Jeong Himchan immediately ran over. I watched this and asked out of curiosity.
“So you can buy goods directly here too.”
“Sometimes people passing by see the sign and come in to buy. Do you like sweet potatoes? Want to buy some?”
At Gu Sangho Hyungnim’s words, I felt like eating sweet potatoes.
“Yes, I should.”
I went over to where they were packing goods, thinking to buy sweet potatoes, and Jeong Himchan was diligently explaining.
“This is the Mulgoguma, famous as honey sweet potatoes from Hwasan. If you steam them and freeze them, you can take them out whenever you want, and even children will eat them deliciously.”
There were children among the family, and Jeong Himchan spoke while looking at them.
“Is that so? Can you send them as gifts too?”
“Yes, if you give us the address, we’ll send them there.”
“Then please give me three three-kilogram boxes. Send two of them to different places by courier.”
“One moment. Could you please tell me the address?”
At the customer’s words, Jeong Himchan tried to write down the address when suddenly one of the children shouted.
“But Uncle, why don’t you have a hand?”
“Huh? Th-that’s…”
Everyone was surprised by the child’s unexpected question. Jeong Himchan stammered, seemingly flustered, and the child’s mother apologized.
“I’m sorry. The child is very curious…”
“It’s fine.”
“Hayul, quickly apologize to Uncle.”
The child’s father also seemed quite flustered and told the child to apologize, but the child, realizing she had made a big mistake, started to look like she was about to cry.
Tears began to well up in the child’s eyes, and seeing that, I somehow felt it was pitiful.
Soon the child started crying, and the parents apologized on her behalf.
“We’re sorry.”
Having received the apology, Jeong Himchan didn’t know what to do. I approached the crying child and quietly asked.
“What’s your name?”
The sniffling child met my eyes and told me her name.
“I’m Yang Hayul.”
“Alright, Hayul. This uncle grew sweet potatoes so well that the angel borrowed his hand.”
“The angel?”
“Yes, because even the angel fell in love with these sweet potatoes. Eat them deliciously, Hayul, and come buy more next time. Okay?”
“Yes.”
At my explanation, the child stopped crying, and the parents quickly paid and left the warehouse. Then Jeong Himchan expressed his gratitude to me.
“I could have just said I was injured, but I was worried the child might get scared for no reason. The words wouldn’t come out. Thank you for helping me.”
“No, I made a mistake because I was surprised when I first saw it too. I’m sorry.”
I apologized for being surprised by his hand earlier, and he smiled brightly at me.
“I’m used to it, so it’s fine.”
“Could I also have a box of sweet potatoes? I need to eat some at home.”
“I’ll get you the best ones.”