THIS IS MY FIRST BLOG POST EVER!! I am getting excited! I spent a lot of time on designing and customizing this blog page. Little introduction of myself – I am kinda perfectionist. Okay, I hate to be a perfectionist. I am working on productivity and efficiency.
Back to the story. Two weeks ago, I started my first ever farm village trip in Korea. I was agog with excitement at going to the farm village! It was a beautiful (the best adjective I can come up with, I promise I will improve my writing next time) morning, the sun was blazing hot and the sky was covered with snowy white cloud (Oh wait, I am not writing a descriptive essay on scenery, am I?).
(Just a to-make-it-not-boring introduction to my post, I will make it sweet and short from now on ^-^)
The first stop: 京畿道 Soomy Land (수미마을)
For your information, Soomy Land is a farm village located ay YangPyeong, Gyeonggi-Do in Korea. Soomy village has been shown more than 100 times through TV programs and major papers since they opened farm tour in 2007. The village produces jobs and profits by holding 4-seasons festivals during whole year and provide tourists safe food and memories. They provide a variety of experience programs according to seasons. Here is the list of programs:
Winter: Ice-fishing, Sleigh-riding, kimchi and wakasagi festival
Spring: Strawberry festival!
Summer: Water activities~
Fall: Potato harvesting, Cat fish festival
Direction: To go from Seoul, you need to take subway to Yongmun station and then take bus or taxi to BongSan 2-Ri SuMiDeul (봉산2리수미뜰) bus stop. From there, a 2 minutes walk is required to reach Soomy Land. Don’t worry, it is just 2 minutes. However, from Yongmun station, you might want to take taxi to Soomy land because it may take a long time to wait for 2-1 bus at exit 2 of Yongmun station. Address: 경기도 양평군 단월면 봉상리 531
531, Bongsang-ri, Danwol-myeon, Yangpyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do. Website: http://www.soomyland.com (only in Korean)
∗You might need to a navigation app to make your travel more easier. Believe me, it is better to use this navigation app. It is called Naver Map. Or you may download the google app or iOS app in your smartphone. However, you need a certain level of proficiency in Korean in order to use the app.
Enough for introduction, now let’s start our journey to Soomy Land!
It is written ‘Steamed Bun Experience Place’
The ingredient to make jjinbbang. Basically it is just two things, dough and red bean. (BTW the red bean was cooked beforehand, you can just eat it)
Before making, you must receive some ‘education’ first. This is the kind ajumma who taught us how to make a round and tiny jjinbbang by using hands. (Of course by hands, not by legs, haha)
Tadaaaa~~ The handmade jjinbbang! Process: Take a piece of dough (not too large), press it thin round shape, put some red beans inside, cover the red beans with the dough, mould the dough into round shape as in the picture! Done!
The round steam bun we made. It doesn’t look nice haha
While waiting for the bun to inflate (while steaming), let’s take a walk at the river nearby!
Beautiful scenery along the river. Fresh air and crystal clear water.
Playing with stones.
Typical picture of rural area.
Our beautiful model.
Tadaaaa~~ After 20 minutes of waiting, our jjinbbangs are born to the world waiting for us to eat.
Look delicious? Haha Have a try!
Next, we were going to harvest sweet potatoes!! I love sweet potatoes but I have no idea how they are harvested. Before that, we were given a red bag to put in the sweet potatoes later. Let’s follow me to take a look at sweet potatoes harvesting!
We need to cross the river to go the sweet potato farm.
Be careful not to fall into the river! (although it is quite swallow)
This is pumpkin, right? Halloween~~
Okay, let’s get a knife, opps I mean a shovel to get started! A good weapon (I mean a tool….) is necessary for efficient work.
Let’s just take a glare at the beauty of the farm before started.
The panorama shoot.
The Korean uncle (a.k.a ajussi) was demonstrating on how to dig the sweet potatoes without hurting them. (I didn’t pay attention so I almost killed them while digging) This lesson tells that you must listen to the ajussi to be a good farmer. Oh, I mean digging the sweet potatoes in this case.
Take a good look. I actually forgot to take photo while digging. So just use your limitless imagination and creativity to image the process.
It had been a hard work to get this full bag of sweet potatoes. We must be grateful for all the food provided for us. And don’t waste any food! Am I too serious? lol
Spot this big dog wandering around the farm. Haha He (maybe she) is cute!! He has such long fur covered his whole body until he couldn’t really see. Oh my, he is just beautiful!
The tractor. The next activity: tractor riding. Dangggggggg,,, it was so much fun!!! It was a like riding roller coaster during earthquake (a weird description). I took a video but sadly, I couldn’t upload it here.
The boss.
This is my favorite part – lunch time. Yeah, I love food. A typical type of Korean food but the taste was definitely not the typical one.
Take the amount you want.
Please wipe the dribble of saliva from your chin. I know it looks delicious.
매운탕. (Spicy soup) It is actually not very spicy. Oh, it is fish soup btw. Don’t ask me what fish is it. I just know eating, distinguishing food is not my specialty.
If you want to have a enjoyable trip, you might need a handsome guy and beautiful girl to accompany you. Haha
I took a big portion. It is called 쌈밥(SSambab) which you wrap the food with lettuce and eat it. Korean style food.
Our group photo. I think this is the only one.
We finished our first trip at Soomy Land. Wait, we still have one more place to go. Before that, let me do a brief conclusion on this Soomy Land. Basically, it was fun, seriously. I recommend you to come with your friends if you don’t want to have more fun! For muslims, you can just have lettuce wrapped with tofu and spicy soup with fish. BTW, Soomy land is well known for its 365 days festival. You can come whenever you have time.
The next stop: 京畿道 山葡萄园 Sanmeoru Farm (산머루농원)
After the first trip, I was almost fainted (I was too exhausted seriously). From Soomy Land to Sanmeoru Farm, it took us 3 hours by bus. It does not look that far from the map but it really is. Okay, I got some time to recharge before the next destination. Let me introduce to you Sanmeoru Farm before going on.
Sanmeoru farm has cultivated wild grape pursuing eco-friendly agriculture since 1979 and produced high quality goods contenting customers. The farm is well known for its activities such as winery tour, wild grape product making, and harvesting which everyone can enjoy together. List of activities you can have there:
It is written in Korean for all the experience activities of this farm.
Sanmeoru Farm
I was forced to wear this Korean ajumma-look pant. And my friend said it looked just nice for me. ==’
The person in charge just introduced to us the history of this farm.
Listening attentively. This brewery is located 10m below the ground in order to provide suitable condition for the fermentation of wine.
You definitely don’t wanna miss the chance to take photo at the mural in front of the brewery.
Mural is also one of the attraction of this farm!
Wine angel?
Our first activity: Wine packaging. It was really easy. First, fill the bottle with grape wine.
Don’t fill it too full.
Next, cover the bottle by putting the cork into the mouth of the bottle.
Finally, seal the bottle with this paper label.
Tadaaaaa,,, it is done!
Mural inside the brewery.
The ajussi explained to us the whole process of making wine including fermentation and growing.
The next activity: winery tour.
The ajussi was introducing this winery tunnel.
This wine tunnel was build on 1979, 36 years ago.
This part of wine tunnel is for winery tour.
A lot of wine buckets is stored in this wine tunnel.
Wine bottle.
The place where Korean drama ‘The Hotel King’ was shot.
One of my favorites photos in this trip.
This section is for private wine storing.
Every wine bucket is labelled.
View of the brewery from outside.
The grape used for making wine.
Now it is the highlight of Sanmeoru Farm tour! That is — wild grape chocolate and soup making.
The experience hall.
First experience: Soup making!
First, cut the soup into cube to melt later.
Next, put the cubes into the container to melt them.
Let’s take a selfie while waiting for the cubes to melt.
Pour the melted soup liquid into cups.
Then, mix the prepared wild grape juice with the melted soup liquid to get the soup fragrant aroma.
Pour the liquid into molds.
Choose your mold first.
Lastly, wait for it to cool down and freeze into solid.
My beautiful teammates
Second activity: Wild grape chocolate making. ( Only for Korean, not in foreigner package)
First, melt the chocolate inside the plastic.
Taking photo from high angle.
After the chocolate melted, press it into the prepared paper container.
Then, put some toppings on top of it according to your own favorite. The chocolate really tastes different from the chocolate sold at the market.
Done!
Last activity: Wild grape jam making. (Which I like the most)
First, we need to cook the wild grapes juice and add a bag of sugar to it.
Then, we added a cup of honey into it to make it sweeter.
Keep stirring it.
Pour the cooked jam into a big container.
Slowly and carefully pour the jam into the provided bottle.
We are done!
The soup previously made. How cute it is!
The photo taken just now finally was out! Stick it to wine bottle and make your wine bottle the one and only in the world. How special!
All the hand-on things we made can be taken home! YAY!
Lastly, we had wild grape wine tasting.
The place where you can taste wine and buy if you like.
They have different kinds of wine. They offered three different flavors of wine for us to taste.
Wine tasting.
Personally, I like the less bitter one. With 12 % of alcohol.
You can also try out this puzzle.
The display rack of the wine. The prices range from 10000 Won to 30000 Won. It is worth the price for sure.
That’s all for this time. I actually spent more than 6 hours to write this post. Hope you enjoy reading. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions about Soomy Land and Sanmeoru Farm. I’ll try my best to help you. ;) See you next time! Check out my upcoming post by subscribing! Stay tune!
37.491219127.487561
439 Yanggeun-ri, Yangpyeong-eup, Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
Simply take a step out of the city, and you can easily find Korea’s rural community! This is a place where everyone can relax and revitalized from the busy city life. A clean natural environment with local specialty food, alongside with interesting experiential programs, and above all, the warm passion of Korea rural community boasts as one of Korea’s tourism attraction.
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