The Kim family album

I remember these numbers without a notebook:

• my first year as an assistant agronomist (1971): 38 centners per hectare;


• the best year of the Soviet time (1983): 61;


• the worst (1992): 19, because there was no diesel for the pumps in July;


• my last year (2008): 54, with a new variety from a Kazakh station.

Rice is a stubborn plant. You flood it, you wait, you drain it, you wait, you harvest. If you hurry, you spoil the grain. If you wait too long, the grain breaks in the combine. The profession of rice has taught me: to be patient and not to trust anyone with water.

My wife says I lived 38 years with the paddies and I have not yet stopped talking in sentences about rice. Last week at the market I said to a young woman who sold apricots, "this one has a little high humidity", and she looked at me like I was a madman, then she checked, and I was right.