Farmer And His Cow – South Korea

Farmer And His Cow – South Korea, June 1994

I saw this farmer tilling the field with his cow while on my circuitous road trip around the S. Korean peninsula in Spring of 1994. What caught my attention was the condition of the cow. She looked so decrepit that she might collapse at any moment. This awakened the animal rights activism in me so I pulled over and got out of the car. The farmer seemed pleasant, but did not speak any English. My Korean vocabulary was  limited to hello, goodbye, thank you, My name is…I would like to buy… and some curse words I learned from a Korean friend in Los Angeles. I was a little peeved that this poor cow was not in retirement, lounging in a barn eating hay all day, and we were getting nowhere fast. The farmers teenage daughter saw us trying to communicate and came to the rescue. She spoke very good English. Through her, I asked the farmer how long he had the cow and he told me he had it for a very long time, since it was a calf. I asked him if he had become attached to the cow. He said yes. The cow had been very good to him and his family. “Since it has been a good cow” I asked, “What will you do when it can no longer work?”  He smiled and replied, “We will not eat her.”

copyright 2011 O. Bisogno Scotti  All Rights Reserved.

Nikon N6006 SLR, AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, exposure: not recorded, handheld, 35 mm Kodak Ektachrome 100T Plus Professional Film (EPP) film scanned on Imacon scanner.

Tags: cherry trees in bloom, cow, farmer plowing his field, fine art, Korean farmer, O. Bisogno Scotti, photographers, photography, photos, S. Korea, South Korea, Spring, Springtime

• October 29, 2011
• Bisogno, people
• 12 Comments