Intertwining With Nature

Rak Tamachat Permaculture Internship, Thailand

Integrating and biomimicing to follow our trust and belief in permaculture and natural systems are our prime purpose at Rak Tamachat Permaculture Farm, Central Thailand. We see the permaculture ethics and principles as our pillars to move toward a sustainable farm and world. The role of our internship (the next one beginning in June 2012), and our activities here contribute to our functioning system. Here are the details.. see if you can pick out all 12 principals!

 

CARE OF THE EARTH

 

About our site:

Rak Tamachat is a new and upcoming permaculture education and demonstration site in central Thailand (a few hours north of Bangkok) with ambitious and exciting aspirations.

A team of 4 Managers and 9 Interns have arrived for the first time in January 2012, keen to learn how to implement large-scale farm Permaculture design. We are excited to follow the outline of our Permaculture Master Plan, designed by Christian Shearer, founder of the Panya Project (our sister farm in Chaing Mai). With this 50 acre marginal land, currently used for commercial corn and rice production, on the edge between rural farming villages and the larger city of Korat, we value the importance of its strategic location. The vision of our design is to provide a replicable, abundant, thriving model of profitable permaculture in action, on a large farm scale. This will have effects, not only on our local community and Thailand, but internationally, through our education centre. With this Master Plan, we have designed from patterns – providing long-term vision in line with the current world situation, to details, where each member on site has had an opportunity to input into the design. We will be a closed loop system, producing no waste, in line with mother nature's techniques.

 

Activities:

Our babies

Our first step is observation and interaction. This year we intend to focus on organizing the human structures and invisible systems, experimenting with that, while observing the natural patterns of the land and how we can most effectively interact with it. Planning for our future means implementing quality rather than quantity, which takes slow and small solutions to work on a human scale.

During the internship we plan to be conducting many integrated permaculture projects, to provide a sustainable system while in the observational stage. Projects pioneered will include; implementing organic garden beds, constructing earthen or natural buildings, conducting courses, building soil fertility and intensively planting and caring for a food forest, while daily rotating the tasks to keep the farm running efficiently.

Working on our cob Pizza Oven

CARE OF PEOPLE

Community:

Interns at Rak Tamachat are given the opportunity to be a fully integrated (rather than segregated!) part of the community, which functions as a team. We have regular meetings to discuss how things are going, and to make decisions about moving forward. Interns are invited to contribute ideas, to add value and bring more diversity and interconnection to our systems.

We base our community on building personal holistic goals to create a shared vision of the farm and Master Plan direction. Each member's needs are important and we ask our interns to use this farm and internship to work toward achieving their own goals. Each intern is asked to be the main caretaker for a certain area of the land/system which include long-term visionary roles such as; water systems, waste and recycling, herbal healthcare, seed saving, digital documentation etc. You are given the freedom to make a genuine contribution to the future of our farm systems. These roles are being created and pursued by the current interns, who have done the ground work in establishing some of the systems. New interns will be able to use this guide, applying self-regulation and accepting feedback, to develop their own functioning systems. This can then continually improve to become efficient and effective for the community as a whole. The ability to accept feedback is highly important in a community environment, and understanding that if the community has requests, respect and compromise is required.

Intertwine long-term role tree

Web of life

              

We intend to integrate with the local Thai community as much possible and interns have an opportunity to learn about specific Issan Thai culture with the Thai family and local workers we house on-site.

 

Courses:

We utilize and value the renewable energy and resources brought onsite through our workshops and courses run throughout the year. All interns are welcome to take part in the education centre aspects of the farm and we encourage them to explore their role in helping to facilitate these courses. Our 6-12 month internship, though, is based around real hands-on “doing”, rather than classroom or workshop learning.

As we are focusing on the implementation of permaculture design here at Rak Tamachat, we like our interns to have a Permaculture Design Certificate before being accepted. We are looking for people who already have some permaculture experience and are currently working on their permaculture diploma or are looking to get some solid permaculture practice.

 

Accommodations:

Because we are a new facility, accommodations are simple, but we have made it comfortable and homey, with the tents and bamboo bungalows available. We are observing the land and human patterns and applying slow and small solutions to build appropriately. A dorm site is currently being constructed for use during the rainy season. The sala (central community space), although unfinished, currently houses our community kitchen, library and teaching spaces as well as spaces to use the internet and just relax after a day’s hard work. Over the wet season months, interns will have an opportunity to be part of the interior creative design of our Sala. We will be sculpting, designing and integrating our own creative designs to form a stimulating, beautiful and comfortable community space using natural materials.
 

FAIR SHARE

We equally share farm implementation work, long-term roles, duties and chores. Work requirements are a minimum of 5 days a week, 6 hours a day with some occasional weekend duties. Interns are also encouraged to take 3 weeks off for every 6 months on the farm. This allows time to explore Thailand or nearby countries.

Co-created request for our community

                                                             

Costs:

The internship is for a minimum of 6 months, US$200 per month, with the first US$1200 to be paid up-front on arrival. The non-refundable deposit of US$200 secures a place as an intern. This amount is payable upon being accepted and cannot be refunded even if the internship is terminated during the first 30 days evaluation period.

This overall cost helps to pay for your food and other resources associated with having interns on site. We are not making financial gain by hosting interns. We genuinely want to make an even trade of their work time for the amount of learning available, each obtaining a yield from our symbiotic relationship, as in nature.

 

Commitment:

To participate as an intern we are asking for a commitment of at least 6 months. This is our way to catch and store their energy! Interns are welcome to agree to longer periods, however we suggest starting with an initial 6 month commitment and that they reassess their commitment at the end of that period.

We hope that the learning environment here will keep Interns engaged and excited enough to stay and learn more, as we encourage the formation of a long-term community at our farm. There is also the opportunity that an internship could develop into one of our paid (stipend) management positions. 

Our design and community are ambitious, exciting and holistic. We are at the beginning and creation stage, so are learning to creatively use and respond to change as energy, resources, climate and environment fluctuate. It's all new and exciting and we look forward to truly intertwining ourselves to become a functioning part of our environment, using mother nature as our guide!

So join us in beautiful Thailand, practice permaculture in action, visit www.panyaproject.org (or www.rak-tamachat.org from May 5th onward) for a list of our courses or even better, follow this link to fill out our Internship application form for 2012!

A New Era at Rak Tamachat

March 10th 2012

The ride continues on from Theron's beautiful words in our first blog, arriving into a new world of Permaculture, community on our open 'blank-slate' farm. I like to call that stage the 'Hole digging era', from which we have now gracefully swooped beyond, into a new era, which I like to entitle 'Foundations – Soil Fertility and Community' 

We're now 2 full moons in, moving past the 'honeymoon stage', as our beloved Building/construction Manager, Matt, phrases it. As a community of 4 Managers, 9 Interns, Christian and Tiaga (our faithful leaders), a Thai family and a whole bunch of crazy Thai workers, well, we've come a long way, to say the least. 

Thank god that initial 'manager meetings' phase is over! We have established some kind of direction and we've already implemented a lot. We've mainly been working on our community relationships, trust building, holistic goals, appreciation and vision, but our biggest event so far was hosting our first PDC on this new site! We've also built half a giant compost toilet (lovingly titled 'the castle') with bricks we've dug, mixed, shaped, moved, shaved, mortared and laid ourselves. Plus, we've built a stunning Pizza Oven, very useful for entertaining the troops and was a hit the first firing during the PDC! We've visited other local projects and made lots of wonderful contacts in the area which will be great resources for us. We're now surrounded by loud, huge yet graceful robots in the form of earthwork machinery. The veil has been removed from the mystery of Swale and Pond marking, measuring and digging... and it's all so much fun!

Permaculture Design Course, taught by Christian Shearer and Geffroy Godeau

The arrival of our PDC students saw our capacity of 15 people, go to 50 overnight. This was a lot for our brand new system to handle, and took a decent amount of frantic preparations, but we pulled it off, in style! The 2 weeks brought new energy, enthusiasm and knowledge, not to mention a whole lot of freshly dug trenches for our water system, mulched orchards, numerously flipped compost and a farm full of happy campers! We learnt a lot about our site through this and realized the importance of good water filtration, clear communication and how to release these wonderful new budding permaculture enthusiasts into the world to do good and make change, without falling into a whimpering bundle with the thought of how much we'll miss them all! Christian and Geffroy's teaching exceeded expectations of inspirational, dynamic and powerful, filling each person, and the atmosphere with hope and excitement. I'm so proud of our interns, who each put in above expectations also, and really were the rocks which made the weeks flow smoothly and function with flexibility and ease. Well done Rak Tamachat crew!

Christian and Geoffroy leading our PDC students to empowerment!

Compost Toilet

Being thrown, head-first, into a full blown 4 stall, weight bearing adobe compost toilet has been an interesting and exciting learning curve for us all at the farm. With Matt's guidance and 72 how-to steps, we're confidently... half way there. Learning how to make and lay adobe bricks from local and on-site resources has been a true bonding experience, highly recommended to any new community! Having a stall ready in time for the PDC was our goal, and with a deadline in sight, we played in the mud until we finally laid the last brick, added a giant back door and filled ¾ full with corn husks to absorb the liquids.. now we can poop in style!

 

Fun in the pit

Shaving bricks at dusk

Final bricks placed on 1^st 2 stalls

Local community

Arunee and Ming giving a presentation to us about Thai culture and customs

We have made some invaluable friends and contacts in the area, one of whom is our beloved Yuppa. Yuppa worked for many years for the agriculture university in Khorat. Under her wonderful Professor, she has conducted much research into organic farming techniques, collected data and information – specialising in biodigesters, rice cultivation and natural soil fertility, written documents, given many workshops to farmers, and experimented and recorded. She has so kindly taken us under her wing to show us the progress of organic farming in Thailand. We visited a 'farm expo' put on by the University, which gave us even more resources and contacts – mushroom inoculation, free government beneficial fungi and insect packs, worm farms, and many more. It gave us hope, that there are a lot of great things happening in Thailand and we have support if we need it.

Ivan on a pedal rice de-huller at the expo

Yuppa shows us how to make coconut milk the traditional way

We have also been adopted by the delightful Omar, who owns an organiccoffee and macadmia farm on the other side of Sikhui (our closest town). We visited his farm and he whole-heartedly and meticulously described every detail of his farm, building further our hope, that organics, CSA (community supported agriculture) and permaculture have a genuine chance in rural Thailand. Omar conducts so many beneficial, integrated systems on his property. Just a few examples;

Omar plants his orchard using permaculture techniques of wide spacing, beneficial ground covers and companion planting by observing how trees grow in their natural environment, such as understory, and mimicking nature.

He also supports the local community by providing coffee seedlings, then support and advice to anyone interested, skilled, unskilled, young or old (one of his farmers is 72years old!) to grow themselves. They grow the plants on their land, then take the coffee cherries back to Omar's farm once harvested, where he provides all processing equipment. They then take the beans back, dry them themselves, and Omar buys them back at a very fair, fixed price, guaranteeing a market for them.

Furthermore, he ferments the cherry's flesh 'waste' to make biofertilizers, adds fish to this liquid to improve the quality and also get a yield of fish, he makes layered compost with the shell waste, and any coffee grounds waste after processing, he then re-uses in the garden and also as a healthy addition to biscuits! Omar has never heard of Permaculture, but is a textbook example of a functioning, sustainable, productive and profitable permaculture system!

Omar lost amongst the coffee bushes

Sampling Omar's delicious coffee on his tiny verandah

Our Community

Of course, when a bunch of enthusiastic permies get together, a powerful, motivated team is created! Clear communication and practising mindfulness are key to a functioning community. As time passes, we are developing more deeper connections because we have the time and space to allow it. In this age of such transient culture, it's a relief to be able to take the time to get to know each other more deeply. We have made leaps and bounds in the development of our invisible structures to most efficiently incorporate our own holistic goals to be in line with the vision and goals of the farm. We are faced with new challenges every day, but group discussions are open, and each person is listened to in a caring environment based around non-violent communication. It's all new, totally flexible and co-created, which leads to compassion and responsibility for our own, and each other's activities, creating a supportive, creative, fun environment.

Trust activity – Falling angels!

The gang heading out in our Tuk Tuk to collect mulch

Earthworks

Me in the midst of some survey action

This place is buzzing with life at the moment. Back-hoes and trucks scoot soil from one place to another with ease, building ponds and garden soil mounds at the same time! We have each learnt the ins and outs of Swale digging (a Swale is a ditch dug on contour to reduce erosion and retain water for slow penetration to roots). In a tropical environment such as ours, we have dug very large swales (1m deep by 3m wide) across the land, we also have heavy clay soil here, so the deeper swale allows for the slow drainage. Being a 50 acre property with a large area designated to swale and alley cropping production, we have ended up with over half a kilometre of swales dug!

Christian and Ivan measuring the spillway for the Swale

Huge, deep, freshly dug swale!

We've also ventured right out the back of our property to the rice paddy areas and have dug two large fields for integrated fish and rice paddies. This includes a lot of specific measurements, getting the slopes and widths correct for healthy, flowing fish. The idea is to make channels along one sloped trench, so that as we flood and release water, the fish can swim into the channels, and eventually we can drain the paddy to capture the fish in one area for easy harvest. See this link for more specific details on how to integrate rice farming.

Digging the rice/fish paddy

We were halted ¾ of the way through digging, at the second large pond by where the next cluster of housing will be located, as we had a HUGE rain storm. Although slightly dis-heartened in the thought that mother nature has made us wait to finish digging, she also had perfect timing! Observation is a key permaculture principle, and this storm gave us the opportunity to make sure water was channelled in the right directions, was held back by swales, flowed into designated wetland areas, and generally did what we intended. We were very excited to see, so far, it's a success.. although, the true test will come when wet season hits.

The storm hits

water in the swale

Water accumulates in the designated wetlands area, yahoo!

Soil Fertility

As permies, seeing all that soil from the earthworks, pulled up, shaken up, and plonked back down, bare and dying, was like having our own hearts ripped out, scrumpled and thrown into landfill. All that bacteria and fungi baking in the sun.. ahhh!! So, first rain, we all ran out barefoot into the mud, bearing buckets of legume seeds – sunhemp, mungbean, black bean.. actually every colour of bean imaginable, and began frantically broadcasting in every direction shouting 'FOR THE SOIL!”. We would prefer to layer a thick mulch over each swale and pond edge first, but are currently sourcing it in large amounts locally, and until it dries up, it's impossible to get a truck in there. So we've had to settle for a thick ground cover, and were able to set up a sprinkler system around one pond to keep the seeds alive, but the swale seeds will have to fend for themselves! As a group, we decided that even if they do only spring up a few centimetres and then scorch, its still better to have something covering the soil, and even that small amount of nitrogen fixed is better than nothing. With nothing but our love and 'grow' vibes sending out daily, we will see how they go!

Multicolour legume, nitrogen fixing ground covers, scarified and ready for broadcast!

'FOR THE SOIL'!

Me spreading seeds on the swales during a stormy sunset

Compost and mulch are the key for good soil, building good bacteria and keeping them there with a beautiful covering which provides food and protection, building healthy humus. We have been busily making and flipping compost daily since we arrived, and now have 2 complete piles, sitting in the shade to grow good fungi, 3 Berkeley/18-day Hot Compost piles at different stages, and 2 long-term piles all on the go. We intend to make some mean compost teas and extractions to fully utilize our delicious compost as we can then dilute and spray over larger areas, giving more value for effort.

Team work for our first batches of Berkley Hot compost

In Summary

With all this movement and 'ground-breaking' activities after the PDC, it's exciting to really feel like our farm is beginning to take the shape of the true permaculture integrated system, as it's intended. We've moved on from the 'hole digging era' to the next step of meaningful activities including building community and soil, which lay the foundation for a successful productive farm environment. With our faithful leader Christian leaving us in a week, his departure will be bittersweet. We will be so sorry to see him go, but he will leave us with the gift of empowerment and knowledge, having lovingly set the precedence of Non-Violent Communication and Integral Theory, while also transferring and portraying his strength, freedom and hope. 

We are now ready for some serious permaculture action! 

Our team with all our beautiful PDC kids

Updates on Current Happenings:

We have a course coming up, Introduction to Permaculture and Community Building, on May 6th-20th. Come check us out!!

We're also open for applications for the next batch of 6 month Internships, beginning in June 2012.. email thefarmcq@gmail.com or check out the Panya website for more details.  

Our website is almost done, and we have set a Lauch date for May 5th... to coincide with 350.org...possible huge celebration... stay tuned for more details!