At My Urban Farm, I’m Growing My Family and Growing Our Sanctuary

This is Backyard Politics, a column by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee that sees the world through the lens of urban farming and agriculture.

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1.

In late winter, I dream about the garden and what I’ll grow. What is it we choose to grow? What informs our choices? And what then informs our gardens? Grow, they say, what you like to eat.

What we like to eat is informed by our experiences and our identities. We don’t come out of the womb with flavor profile preferences. They’re formed in the course of our lives.

I once studied with an orthodox rabbi for five years. Toward the end of our studies, Rabbi Finkelman announced I was ready to go before the beit din, a three-person rabbinical court that decides your identity. Rabbi Finkelman also added that my husband-at-the-time needed to attend synagogue before he’d forward me to the beit din for judgment.

My then-husband, who was born Jewish and is of Israeli descent, had not attended synagogue throughout my conversion process. When I brought up Rabbi Finkelman’s requirement, his response was, “I’m not the one converting, you are. So I’m not going.”

When I told the rabbi in so many words that his requirement could not be fulfilled, the rabbi became quiet. He was often quiet, as wise people are. Sometimes, wisdom comes from being silent and waiting.

But I had learned from him by then. So I, too, was silent. Sometimes, our sessions were filled with respectful silence. And I waited for wisdom.

The rabbi said he could not convert me without my then-husband’s participation. I nodded, still silent. And then he said that I could still be Jewish without the beit din’s input.

What?

“Identity,” he said, “is formed from three components: first, self-identity; second, social identity; and third, legal identity—the most important of which is self-identity, the only facet of identity that involves the power of your own choice.”

It was revelatory to hear this breakdown, to see the separate parts of how we are seen. We all want to be seen: by our parents, our friends, authority figures, and—most of all—ourselves. What we choose to grow is part of our self-identity, how we see ourselves, regardless of official names or governmental labels. What we grow is how we are seen.

2.

I have a berry patch designated for my daughter. She runs to every berry plant she sees and picks it clean. When she was three and we took her to a strawberry farm, we joked that, once she was done, there would be zero strawberries left.

This behavior was not so good when, as a toddler, everything she picked went straight into her mouth. And if I when I forbade her from eating potentially poisonous berries, she would inevitably tantrum her dismay.

As with many things, I decided to head her off. I planted tayberries, blackberries, raspberries, black raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, pineberries, jostaberries, and huckleberries for her to pick at will and eat without concern.

She is someone who will often only eat vegetables and fruit straight off a plant. She will eat broccoli florets in the garden, but never in my kitchen. So perhaps, let us add: Grow only what you like to eat straight off the plant.

We also have a flower patch; for beauty. My daughter loves to pick flowers. One blink, and she will have gathered a posy in her hands. So much so, that she—and, by proxy, I—have been scolded by old ladies at the Stanford Shopping Mall for picking flowers.

Dear reader, I did tell the old ladies that I did not know what my little child had done until she’d done it. And my child, who knew all of fifty words at the time, had done something out of pure joy without knowing. I yelled these things. Were you not once a child? Perhaps you are a mother? Do you not remember?

I wanted us to be seen.

The old lady wanted to enforce rules. She said, very understandably, that those flowers were for everyone to enjoy. She wanted the flowers to be seen; this, she said with condescension. She added, “You people ruin everything.”

You people.

So it was not about the flowers. It was about identity and power—power over us as people of color with the flowers and legality as proxy.

Oh, lady, I yelled. You just crossed a bigger line. And I yelled until she walked away.

My daughter asked, “Why you yell at her, Mama?”

She was mean about it, I explained. Because she could have been nicer. Because I won’t have people being mean to us.

I did not add, “because of our race,” to my two-year-old daughter. She would learn soon enough.

And then I went home and planted our damn flower patch—for beauty, for peace. Grow what will give you sanctuary.

3.

When I was growing up, my father kept a large garden, which these days would likely be called an urban farm. In the 1970s, there were few Korean grocery stores with Korean produce, even in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, to which we moved in 1978. In fact, I remember when Los Angeles’s Koreatown felt as if it was the size of one square block, with Hankook Market on one end and Vermont Market on the other, way before HK Super Market and nightclubs and Nicholas Cage came to town.

My father grew this garden out of both necessity and nostalgia. Over the years, his friends would send him seeds from Korea. Or carry them over in envelopes when they came to visit. This is how we got our hands on doraji (bellflower) and dodok (codonopsis lanceolata) and mugwort and curled mallow (ahwook) and Korean peppers and Japanese eggplant. Even chui namul (Korean asters) from Jiri Mountain.

We ate out of that garden year round. It was the source of things that weren’t at market, weren’t mainstream, weren’t dried, but fresh. The thing that made my parents feel approximately at home. The thing that both created and satiated nostalgia.

It was nutritious. The plants funneled nutrients out of the soil and stored them in cells, which, in turn, we ate and put into our own bodies. We ate the stories of these plants and imbibed our parents’ memories. The stories of their favorite and secret spots to forage. Many of these seeds came from the mountains of Korea, where my parents themselves foraged as children after the Korean War. They tasted better from the mountain, said my parents, but that this would do.

Some seeds did not grow too well. We lived in the San Gabriel Valley; some seeds like mountain asters only flourish at altitude. But still, my parents coaxed them along, willed them to grow despite geographical displacement and despite differing weather patterns.

Wherever you are, I learned, you can make your memories spring out of earth. They could not see anything recognizable in the landscape of 1970s Los Angeles, so they made their property a sanctuary.

We grow what we miss and cannot find. We grow what reinforces how we see ourselves. And when we see ourselves, we see sanctuary.

It is a constant of my childhood that my father had such a garden. So many of my memories are entwined in his garden, where in hindsight, he had reprieve and where I could amble safely. Whatever happened in the world, whatever disrespect he received, he had his plants. And his plants never talked back. His plants instead connected him to the earth on which he stood. A piece of earth that didn’t always make him feel welcome.

In my own urban farm, I connect back to my own culture. To, pun intended, my roots. To a tradition of gardening and my family’s self-identity. To what it means to be a child of immigrants and help things grow.

We grow what we miss and cannot find. We grow what reinforces how we see ourselves. And when we see ourselves, we see sanctuary.

4.

In that same spirit as my parents, I largely grow things that can’t be found at the store and a mix of things our family likes to eat. These things that aren’t friendly to transportation include tayberries and black raspberries and, of course, heirloom tomatoes. And, while they’re not rare, romano beans for my Italian partner.

This garden of ours reflects our household.

I’d never before eaten romano beans. I’d always preferred Kentucky Wonder beans, the thing of Thanksgiving casserole legend, with their narrow pods and crunch. In fact, I love green beans. But I shied away from romano beans. They were flat and looked . . . pale. But my partner prefers them. Romanos are the green bean with which he grew up.

And then I tasted them. They were delicious.

So a garden is about growing new things, too. To experiencing new flavors. To adopting new favorites. To expanding our identity.

Last year, I grew a few Korean greens and vegetables from my childhood memories. I planted Schisandra vines, which produce berries used for omija cha, which remind me of sweaty summers spent in Seoul as a teenager, walking into an air-conditioned tea shop in Insadong, and ordering iced omija cha, the five flavors of which—sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and pungent—provided an overwhelming and sudden relief to the relentless monsoon heat.

I grew job’s tears, known as yulmu in Korea. Yulmu, too, is often made into a savory tea. And I remember my mother drinking yulmu day in and day out—only yulmu tea—and wasting away until her clothes hung off her body. All while saying, “I’m fine. Yulmu tea is very healthy,” even though she was not fine, and definitely not okay with all my father’s affairs. Somehow, even though he’d always had dalliances, there was something about one particular dalliance that made my mother stop eating.

I planted Korean grey squash. My daughter and I harvested them and sliced them into rounds. Dipped the slices into rice flour and then an egg wash and fried them. “Mama,” she said, “I love this squash.”

Another generation. More memories of food from the garden. Forming an identity.

I felt a little like my father, trying to connect with my past, coaxing my identity out of the earth. My parents immigrated here and made a life somehow. I was born here and flourished. Seeds too, travel, and establish themselves in new earth.

When my parents moved to a retirement community outside of Las Vegas ten years ago, my father asked me what I wanted from his home, my childhood home. And to come down and “get my stuff.” I remember throwing everything—notebooks from college, fourth-grade art projects, a prom dress I never wore—into the dumpster. But I asked him for seeds from his garden.

He was delighted. I had learned something after all, he thought. He proceeded to collect a good number of seeds for me later that year before he moved out completely to a house with soil so dry he would not be able to grow anything in the earth again.

When I received the seeds, I didn’t have much of a garden at all. I was married to a man who didn’t want anything but Western European garden design—when he left me was when my urban farm began. When he left me was when I planted and grew what it was I wanted to grow. When he left me was when I formed an identity outside being his wife.

But while I was married to him, I could not grow. I was not allotted space within the garden’s design. So I planted the seeds from my father—bellflower, an attractive plant on its own—in a pot, and left it at that.

Then, apparently, I put the remaining seeds in a dark and cool cabinet. And promptly forgot them. They sat there when I got pregnant, when I had my daughter, when my marriage fell apart, when I began planting, when I published a book, and when I began this column.

Earlier this spring, I did some cleaning and found them in the back of that cabinet. They were wrapped up in the paper towels in which my father first sent them, labeled in his handwriting. I was stunned. I’d stashed them in future hopes, not bearing to throw them away, twelve years ago. Would they grow? I seeded them into pots, anxious and eager.

A Twohey bird came by and ate the seeds out of the pots the next day. Dammit.

I sowed more. I shared some with a friend; I wanted them to grow somewhere. To propagate widely.

Because our families are expansive. Families change. They’re not just made of bloodline connections. We have to build out our own families and communities.

Families evolve. They scatter.

5.

Here’s a story about my family scattering. My grandfather and his five brothers were all educated in Japan. These were in the 1930s, before the Korean War, when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule, when anyone who wanted a higher education did so on Japanese soil.

My grandfather returned to Korea after graduation. But two of my grandfather’s younger brothers, my grand-uncles, decided to stay in Tokyo after completing their studies. One stayed, became a surgeon, married, and had children. Another stayed and became a businessperson. He married, but never had children.

And there, the story ends. They assimilated into Japanese society. My grand-uncles disappeared into the mist of legend, like the Dead Men of Dunharrow.

And that is all I’ve ever known.

But last year, a notification showed up on my 23andme account. Someone was shown to be a genetic match and likely a second or third cousin. She was Japanese.

Could it be?

I reached out. “Are you, by chance, my long-lost relative? Was your grandfather, by chance, Korean and educated in Tokyo? Was he a doctor? Was his name, by chance, S—?”

Within an hour, she responded: “YES.”

We had been looking for each other. She was the granddaughter of my surgeon grand-uncle. I was the granddaughter of her grand-uncle who left Pyongyang and settled in Seoul.

Over the next few weeks, we exchanged emails and pieced together our family histories. I sent images of archival family photographs, which included her grandfather. We met via Facetime. Her grandfather had died young from tuberculosis and with him, his history and a connection back to her Korean family disappeared. I learned I have an uncle in Japan. An uncle who doesn’t want to talk about his Korean roots; the discrimination in Japan is not kind to those of Korean descent.

Our self-identities are sometimes formed by legal and social forces. Sometimes, we hide who we are—even hate who we are—out of fear and shame and discrimination. We try to disappear the part of ourselves that is so hard to bear (and bare) in the world. If we can, we pass. We try to assimilate.

But who we are can never truly be erased.

Families change. They’re not just made of bloodline connections. We have to build out our own families and communities.

There is an orange tree in my backyard. It is beautiful. It is prolific. Visitors, tempted by the oranges, often pull one off the tree to eat.

“Don’t,” I warn.

They usually think I’m admonishing them for picking fruit.

“No, you can pick what you want,” I say. “It’s just, those oranges are—”

Their faces pucker.

“Those oranges are really fucking sour.”

Fruit trees are usually produced by grafting scion branches onto rootstock. The logic behind this is to produce a hardy fruit tree made of parts. You choose the lower trunk and roots of a tree known to thrive in a particular kind of soil and climate. Then you attached to that trunk the branches of a tree known to produce delicious fruit. Over time, these two parts fuse together into one tree.

Sometimes, the rootstock—of citrus trees, especially—are known to overtake the graft. What was once sweet fruit becomes sour and inedible.

We cannot subjugate who we are. We can adopt new identities and we can adopt an exterior that makes us more palatable to society, but our roots cannot be forgotten.

My family has expanded. Seeds are scattered and grow where they land. They travel in the coat of a mammal, in the gut of a bird across land and water. No walls (ahem) can keep nature out. There are no borders for plants and pollen.

When I look at my garden, at the myriad Korean plants and Western plants, I see the experiences of my life. The facets of my identity. Grow what you like to eat.

But what you like to eat is very complex. Who you are is complex. Embrace it all.

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