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Published: September 7th 2010
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Before?
This must have been taken before we began working! WWOOFING. You may not have heard of it. World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is what it stands for. There are many opportunities throughout the world to WWHOOF. Essentially, you work on a farm and in return receive room and board. Twelve days into our Thailand adventure, Dave and I decided it was time to venture to the farmlands and get to work.
Walking down the streets of Chiang Mai, the most affluent part of Thailand we have been to thus far, we discovered a small restaurant called Juicy4u. Intrigued by the sign outdoors of a beautiful farm, we approached its front door, where we discovered that all of the produce at this restaurant came from a farm, a WHOOFing farm, that is. The kind Thai woman working behind the counter who served us a mango smoothie handed me the business card of Tom and Kitty, the owners of the farm, and the rest was history.
We arrived to the farm after a two hour ride in the back of a white sorng-taa-ou (bus) with a couple of local women and one man from France who was also going to work on the farm. Upon arrival, Tom, greeted us
After
After our work... and showed us his home and the rooms in it where we would stay. His wife, Kitty, is from Thailand and is a culinary artist. She cooks in the restaurant that is adjacent to the home. Tom is from England. The two of them have lived together in either Thailand or England for nearly eight years. Even so, Tom speaks hardly any Thai because he is “too lazy” to learn it and Kitty speaks English “so well” that it makes him even lazier. He has tried to learn some Thai, however, but it is very difficult because different areas of Thailand have slightly different dialects. Anyway, after we settled into our rooms he showed us the farm, which was smaller than anticipated.
We sloughed our way down a muddy trail through overgrown banana trees and fallen passion fruit. Kitty’s dog snapped at our boots and Tom yelled at the “little shit” to “bug off.” As Tom showed us the composting area, the chicken coop, future rice paddies and rows of weeds throughout the field, he pointed out work that previous wwoofers completed. After touring the farm and working for a couple of hours composting and feeding chickens, we retreated
Before
Before our labor. . . to the house for dinner and an evening of rest.
We woke the following morning for breakfast at 8:30 and after eating a bowl of muesli with homemade bread (a rarity in Thailand!) fresh fruit from the farm and homemade yogurt (slightly different than home, but delicious) we stepped into our rubber boots and headed to the field.
For nearly four hours we used hoes and machetes to chop down overgrown weeds, useless chili, basil and mint plants and a host of unknown, unnamed plants that naturally spring up in fertile, empty plots of land. Sweat dripped out of every pore of our bodies; Dave able to wring out his shorts as if they had been dunked in water. After we chopped down the useless vegetation we raked it into piles to then transfer to the composting area. The land was finally ready for hay to be laid down, which we gathered from a nearby area. We carried the hay down the path that was interrupted by holes and plopped it down where future vegetation will be planted.
Drenched in sweat with dirt accumulating on my bed and the humidity making the air thick, I picked up
Before..
This wasnt the exact land we farmed, but similar. a haystack. Within moments I was covered with hundreds of small ants crawling over my body. I dropped the haystack and started wiping my skin off frantically. The ants felt like they were eating away at my skin. The ants wouldn’t disappear. I yelled to Dave that ants were crawling over my body and ran to the outdoor shower. I was able to handle the heat and dirt and sweat, but not the ants. I stripped down and let the cold water wash the ants away. And then, just as anyone would want to, I put back on my filthy clothes and returned to the farm.
We continued to work until we finished our job. After lunch we returned to the farm with two new whoofers who had arrived, (one from Portland, one from England) making five of us. Lucky us - we got to do the same thing only at a different area of the farm. This was more mentally than physically difficult for me, and eventually Dave wore out too. Near the end of our second shift, Dave began doing mindless tasks to kill time.
“I was picking up chili sticks, hacking at weeds,” he said,
Completed
The fields in completed form. making me laugh. “I was just trying to look like I was working. When Tom said we were done I was out of there as fast as I could.”
Needless to say, we left the following morning.
(Actually, it was well worth the experience. We enjoyed getting a taste of farm life in Thailand and seeing how labor-intensive farming is! Especially at a pretty inefficient farm in terms of labor to output ratio. And heck, we got free meals and beds for two nights)
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