| Ryan Phillips, left, is assisted as he prepares lamb pitas for farm guests, May 16. Image courtesy of Hallie Bradley |
By Hallie Bradley
Bear Foot Gardens has been making a name for itself with its extra-spicy sauces for a couple years, but now they'll be reaching even more people with the help of Shuttle Delivery.
Bear Foot's landowner, gardener Ryan Phillips, has started to bring seasonal comfort foods straight from the farm to Seoul residents with his new endeavor, Farm Kitchen by Ryan. This option will allow even more people to enjoy the organic seasonal food that Phillips has been producing in Suwon for four years.
While working in the culinary department of Suwon Science College a decade ago, Phillips went looking for fresh herbs and jalapenos but was told they were unavailable or too expensive. A garden club on campus was born and though that fizzled out when the students left for summer break, Phillips developed an enthusiasm for gardening.
"I caught the bug," began Phillips, a U.S. resident of Suwon originally from Flower Mound, Texas. "Over the next year or two my rooftop was filled with all sorts of projects from air pruning and aquaponics to submersible watering systems and even homemade lactobacillus fish emulsion ferments for organic fertilizers."
The rooftop could only provide so much space and so many options in terms of gardening, so the search for land began.
Because there is no real estate agent for finding farm or garden land, Phillips found the search to be the hardest part of his endeavor to begin Bear Foot Gardens in Hwaseong. "There are weekend farm plots for rent but they're too small and that didn't lend the freedom to experiment with different techniques," he said.
After driving around and talking to people, sometimes relentlessly but always with friendly persistence, he signed a contract. That was short-lived though as he found out the land was zoned for rice farming only and his search began again. With a little luck, he and the small group of like-minded friends who had decided to go in on the land together were able to begin once they found a plot on the edge of Suwon and Yongin.
The group quickly realized land gardening was completely different to rooftop gardening and old farmers in the area were even stopping by to pass on friendly tips while telling them they were doing everything wrong.
"Before we got our land, a few friends had already been interested in growing some ridiculously spicy peppers to make hot sauces," Phillips said, "and not just any hot sauce, but fermented hot sauce."
| Bear Foot Gardens' homemade hot sauce is made from peppers straight out of the garden. Photo courtesy of Hallie Bradley |
While Koreans have their own adoration for spice, most have never tried a habanero, scotch bonnet or Carolina reaper, and the group found there to be a large market for their sauces. Via markets like Seoul's Marche@ the farming group began selling their hot sauce to make ends meet as Bear Foot Gardens has grown. Mika Wells, a Marche@ consumer, purchased some of the hot sauce and found it to be extremely satisfying. "It had a mixture of sweetness and spice and it was super flavorful. It didn't overpower the food when I used it and I used it on practically everything," she said.
Bear Foot Gardens hosts events and welcomes volunteers weekly to help with the farm and then enjoy a farm-to-table-style meal. Phillips says the 520-pyeong (1,719-square-meter) garden would be impossible to manage without help, and getting highly interested people, families, and friends to pitch in for a few hours while he provides lunch like mesquite smoked chicken, pulled pork or roast lamb is exactly the kind of community he enjoys fostering.
"It's a playground of flavors out there with often unfamiliar ingredients to the Korean Peninsula," Phillips said. They have grown white eggplant, holy basil, lime basil, cinnamon basil, okra, collard greens and of course their staple of 20 varieties of chilies. Phillips is most excited to see how the crop of peaches and cream sweet corn comes out in July.
| A guest grabs some of the homegrown lettuce to top off his lamb pita. / Image courtesy of Hallie Bradley |
Check out Farm Kitchen by Ryan on Shuttle Delivery to order lasagna for two with herbs from the farm and homemade ricotta cheese along with a generous portion of garlic bread for W19,000. This menu item will run year-round with others being added in as crops are harvested.
To learn more about the upcoming events, visit fb.com/BearFootGardensEvents or follow @Ryan_Wesley_Phillips on Instagram.
Hallie Bradley is a writer based in Seoul and runs the popular site thesoulofseoul.net.