Romance in the Vineyard

L is a fashion designer whose masterpiece was poached by her supervisor. As a result, she’s ousted by the company to join the unemployed troop. As a young girl, she has been dreaming to marry someone who is rich and affluent and to live happily thereafter. However, life is not always what she originally planned. She and her best friend M have gone through lots of bad time, and they often drink beer on the rooftop together to weave their unfulfilled dream as starry sky guards them through the night until dawn light gradually emerge from the eastern sky.

One day L’s distant relative calls and proposes her a deal-that’s is, if she could work in her granduncle’s vineyard, which worths billions of Korean dollars, for a year, he would bestow his vineyard to her. At first, L was resistant to this proposal despite a great fortune that comes with the deal. ” How could I, a city- grown girl, survive such a drudgery under the scorching sun in a remote farm where everything is so crude to the extreme?” she thought. L’s parents and sole brother are happier than ever after hearing the proposal by L’s granduncle, especially after they find out the value of the vineyard from a local real estate agent. For the sake and fate of the family, they incessantly persuade L to work in the farm for a year, and sell the vineyard after a year of physical torture. ” Hey, it’s only a year, then 2 billion dollars is yours to keep. We can buy a big house, a decent car, and live like a king… blah blah blah…….,” they keep on preaching L like a group of experienced financial planners who advise their client after a windfall from the lotto 6/49. Since L is unemployed, she decides to give the vineyard a try.

That’s how L met C, who is an orphan, adopted by her granduncle when he was a little boy, and C has been working in the vineyard ever since then. C has a dark-skin complexion and a pair of big eyes that illuminate even the darkest corner of the vineyard. He is not an illiterate farmer, as quite a few of them are, but an erudite scholar specializing in organic farming of grapes. The granduncle, the owner of the large vineyard, sets up a scheme for his niece to learn farming from C, his adopted son, hoping for them to inherit his vineyard, into which he has devoted his lifetime effort.

L, being a princess from pampering of her parents, is so clumsy when undertaking menial work, something that she dislikes tremendously. Waking up at 4 am every morning to conduct various tasks in order to ensure the best quality of grapes is intolerable for her, not to mention that she has to play with dirt and stinking fertilizer throughout the process. Though C is boisterous in treating L, underlying the surface is caring, admiration, and most amazingly, love. L, on the other hand, learns the merit of hard working of which she did not have a chance to experience in the city. She finally realizes that a dream can only be carried out through hard work and dedication; if not, dream is always a dream that is forever suspended in the air. She eventually understands the sublime quality of working in the farm, and subsequently discovers her true love, which has been nurtured in the vineyard ever since the first day she stumbled upon the farm.

My favorite quotes:(1) Farming is not about harvest and fertilizing, but about the possession of a mentality of a farmer when your crop is inflicted with a pest. A farmer’s mind is similar to that of a parent’s, forever caring for the beloved child.(2) I want to be a man of the great earth to imbibe you with nutrients, and to guard you through eternity.

Hey, let me tell you something. If you haven’t been a farmer, you haven’t experienced what life is all about.

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