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Published: April 3rd 2012
Separating Tomato Seeds From The Pulp
Putting the tomato pulp in water to separate the seeds. It usually takes ten days or more before they are separated and then dried out before packing and labeling them."Laziness is the true way to be an environmentalist, to live sustainably."
Jon Jandai, organic farmer and adobe housing innovator, Thailand
There are many parables of the seed. When Jesus, whose parables are probably the most famous, speaks of 'good soil', I ponder interpretations of the word 'good'. Is it true that strong roots can only grow in the best soil, that which is 'good'?
'Good soil' often creates a metaphorical image that might posit in your mind that agricultural success is found in the Ivy Leagues of soil, such as Thailand's Chao Phraya Delta in the Rangsit area north of Bangkok where rice crops can be harvested three times per year; this compared to once per year in the arid soils of the hills in Northern Thailand. The Chao Phraya Delta, near Bangkok, is known as the 'Rice Bowl' of Asia (once a great swamp) comparable to America's 'Bread Basket' in the Midwest (once known as the the 'Dustbowl'😉. Given such a tag, the impression might be that only soils like these can create 'good' roots. As I will explain later, I have just seen with my own eyes how this is nothing more
than the unwillingness to go out and look for yourself what is really out there.
The most famous parable of Jesus about the seed exhorts how the meek (ie the good souls) will inherit the earth. Whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, I have rarely been inspired by the words of Jesus. I grew up in a much more secular world than this, but one that was equally spiritual and loving to that of any church community. Mine was heavily influenced by the hippy world my parents emerged from(1 Catholic, 1 Atheist), the English literature professor lifestyle of my father's parents and the American-Italian traditions of my mother's large extended family. This menagerie of influences, or at least I thought it was a menagerie compared to my more homogenously 'American' friends, kept me on the move and forced me to engage more outwardly with the world. I often found our summer home on Prince Edward Island the most consistently stable place from childhood to my teenage years, so in a sense, 'foreigners' made me feel the most secure and became like family when I was growing up, outside of my own immediate family of course.
At times I
Pop
My seed guru at Pun Pun may have sought Jesus or someone like him but he never found me and I never took to him; my gods were elsewhere, often in books of adventure or mystery such as the Narnia Chronicles or the Hardy Boys, or comics with idealistic heroes such as Spider-Man or Daredevil. My grandparents and parents made sure I got good doses literature with bedtime readings of Homer's Odyssey and JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Given the diverse soils of my roots, I chose not to identify wholly with any of these influences but to adopt selectively those that suited me best at the time......Italian food rather than Italian Catholicism, reading more comics than English literature, drinking alcohol rather than taking LSD and Run DMC rather than Bob Dylan.
This past week I spent about two or three days staying at the Pun Pun Center for Self-Reliance where my American friend Ryan is part of the community. I slept in the adobe hut he made with his girlfriend in the woods and in the dry foothills surrounded by the partially denuded forest. The center is run by Pee Jon (sounds like Joe to me....Joe'n) who is known for saying "Life
Lunch with Jon and the interns
Love the palm leaves we could drag from the woods to use as a blanket. No industrial products necessary and nothing to carry along. is Easy." Pee Jon, as he is known at Pun Pun, seems to have something of a mild cult status in these parts and his sustainability center attracts people from all over the country and the world. Pun Pun made me think of the little cabin in the woods and tough hills (especially for agricultural pursuits) of West Virginia that my parents once dreamed of making into their own many years ago, except perhaps a more successful version. After a short stint in the wilderness, my parents dream dissolved, I have always assumed, because my mother got sick, but I've always had a wondering sense about what it was like there and what went right, what went wrong.
MORE ABOUT PUN PUN AND THE PANYA PROJECT: http://punpunthailand.org http://www.panyaproject.org/ BLOG ABOUT PUN PUN http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/columns/Jason/2003/0203/thailand.shtml JON JANDAI'S TED TALK Pun Pun reminds me of what a hippy commune might have been like back in its 60s heydays but with a modern day twist. They are multinational in scope (multilingual as well) and outside the presence of foreigners,
they are more mainstream in a country that is still much more agricultural than America was in the 1960s. Coupled with its neighbors (see the link to the Panya Project above), Pun Pun engages in seed saving, earthen building, permaculture, organic gardening and workshops that focus on a plethora of survival cum sustainability practices. The day I left three guys from three different countries at the Panya camp were putting the finishing touches on an egg shaped pizza oven made largely from the surrounding dirt of the hills. I had very happily tasted a freshly made pizza with organic tomatoes I had picked from the Pun Pun garden the night before so I was jazzed up to see a similar oven being built the very next day.
The low-key and friendly demeanor at both camps is welcoming although it can be quite subdued during the hot and humid afternoons of summer here. Panya is made up of mostly foreigners or 'farang' as they call us here while Pun Pun is attended by primarily Thai clientele. A group of about twenty Thai university students were doing an internship on earthen building while I was there and the Panya
group were learning a variety of organic gardening, landscaping and vegan cooking skills. We all often met up at the end of the day at Pun Pun's cafe where they whip up ice cold mango and coconut shakes with cinnamon or roselle tea with ginger. The peanut butter made with honey they make is worth the visit alone especially with some starfruit or mulberry jam.
I spent most of my time with "Pop" a twenty-something former film student who smilingly labeled himself a 'geek' in certain matters, seeds and music at the top of the list. He seemed to take some pride in his geekiness. I was impressed and loved talking with him on a broad range of topics. He is among the best English speakers in camp although many are quite fluent. Workshops in both English and Thai as well as a vegetarian restaurant in Chiang Mai city with many farang clientele provide many opportunities for interaction that I am sure help many members buildup and maintain their fluency. Furthermore, several members of Pun Pun's community including Pee Joe's wife are not native to Thailand just as Pee Joe is not native to this part of
Thai Egg Sandwich for lunch
Black sticky rice, a boiled egg and some nam phrik (fish paste a little like cheese) made me imagine I was eating an egg sandwich except much better. No plastic for making or carrying this...only banana leaf and twine for packaging. Thailand.
Pop patiently led me through the gathering, fermenting, drying, packaging and mailing process. All seeds are given away through donations rather than by a set price. I watched as Pop slowly went through and answered, by hand, over a hundred self-addressed stamp envelopes with seed requests. My job was mainly the grunt work but I got to have some really nice conversations with Pop while I was doing it. I am planning to go back in a month or two and I hope he will still be there. Arrangements are very fluid at both camps which I imagine helps maintain the strong energy of creativity I witnessed.
From the photos here you can see that the soil here is not the choicest. It is dry and light-colored, up on a hilly area overlooking the valley where corn and rice, among other things are grown. During the rainy season it gets quite muddy and difficult to navigate. The rice grown here, when it is grown at all, tends to be rain fed or irrigated from several local dams rather than kept in wet rice paddies like in Thailand's most productive rice growing areas.
Taking a break from the heat
Signs of the modern world are everywhere On a hike through the forest, several locals harped on how they think the dams have reduced the amount of moisture held by the watershed here. I am sure heavy logging hasn't helped either. The forest beneath the trees was still smoking from a burning it had received just before I arrived. This is the same kind of burning that has destroyed the air quality in Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand over the past few months. I am still curious about the details of why this is happening. It is not clear to me why the scale of burning has increased so much since last year. Many explanations have been given but they seem more intent on explaining than any real investigation.
Given the down-time of the oppressive afternoon heat, I sat in the shade and did some reading in-between gardening and forest hikes. They have a very good library in both Thai and English the quality of which reflects the interesting folks that have been in-and-out of the camp leaving books on the way out. The words of popular agriculturalist writer Richard Manning, who talks about what will drive next Green Revolution, hit me
At the Pun Pun Cafe
Banana and Peanut Butter Shake in a subtle but lingering way, in the way the sweetness of a fresh seasonal fruit intangles the desires of your gastronomic heart. Like Jesus, Manning posits in his book "Food Frontier: The Next Green Revolution" that the greatest gains in agriculture will come from marginal areas. The idea of productivity from seemingly poor lands is just what impressed me about my two-and-a-half day visit to Pun Pun Sustainable Living. The dry soil and the staggering heat may be a constant drag but they are clearly surmountable.
The thought of lands 'meek' in appearance but fruitfully productive brought me back to thinking about the marginal lands of West Virginia, where at the age of three, my conscious life began or at least the earliest vivid images in my memory. The generosity and friendliness of the people at camp reminded of Prince Edward Island where everyone you meet isn't peppering you with questions that can often seem to police your right to exist with any dignity (ie What do you do? Why are you here? Where are you from?) rather than an intent to connect meaningfully. There is less of a hurry in such place which leaves time
Free Range Chickens
They don't eat meat at Pun Pun so the chickens are only used for their eggs. You can see although they are not completely free to roam they have quite a lot of space. A noisy bunch they are!! to connect more emotionally and in my view creatively.
Pun Pun's Sustainability Center is not really self-sufficient in that everything consumed there is not produced there, but they have made many inroads into less dependence on the market to provide for their own needs. They produce a lot of both what is necessary and creative. Furthermore, they provide something meaningful to the outside world both locally and internationally. All of this is done on land that few, if anyone, probably even wanted nearly ten years ago when the project started. Their seed bank and their willingness to share with just about anyone are the kind of story that should be headlining the daily news.
"Life is Easy" after all, but only if you want it to be and only if you find a way to share its secrets with everyone, and not just the market or the government. Until I start to see ubiquitous corporate or religious logos and slogans that says "Laziness is Godliness", I'm with Jon Jandai, laziness is the way to go. It is the mathematical efficiency with which most of us spend our lives on the clock or chained to
ever expanding responsibilities which are 'uncivilized' and I believe unsustainable for good health. I hope to return again soon to both connect with my past and to live more of what is 'good'. The soil at Pun Pun just might help me to build my own roots in the present.
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Helen & Bob
non-member comment
This is a thoughtful investigation, Zak, of the concept of \"good soil\" and it relation to strong roots, and how soil in all its variety relates to your life, past and present. I don\'t want to write too much here because I have no idea whether you ever see these comments and I probably should just use regular email. This piece is worth fine-tuning in our opinion. You do evoke the feeling for us attentive readers that really fertile soil is not what has fed your roots, so to speak, or the produce you have discovered in Thailand or West Virginia, but rather you have been inspired by the imagination and brotherly collaboration of people in marginal (by western industrial standards) communities. That\'s what good soil is, we think you are saying. And you do well on the metaphor of good soil. But sometimes you can make the connections clearer. One example: when you cite how offputting the usual questions from strangers are (what do you do, etc) you need to tell us how the more earth-centered people from PEI, Pun Pun, Panya, etc. actually demonstrate and develop acceptance--sharing food? Ideas? work? or what? And what you mean, or they mean, that being lazy makes for a greener existence? It looks like there\'s a lot of grueling work in planting, drying seeds, cooking, mailing seeds, etc. A little more shaping, a clearer line on where you want to take us will make a big difference in this already promising essay. Much love, and admiration--these thoughts come from our discussion together. H & B