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!