WWOOFing on the Three-Generation Farm in Thailand – what does that mean?

Having heard about the Three-Generation Farm through the organization WWOOF, which connects interested volunteers and organic farms all over the world, we chose this farm to be our first stay in Thailand.
 
Dec. 3, 2012 - PRLog -- After a long trip on the night train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai we arrived on 17 September at Prem Tinsulanonda International School (http://ptis.threegeneration.org), which is connected with the farm, where Chrissie and Supon, who run the farm, warmly welcomed us.  We were very excited to enter into a whole new world.

The first day was full of new impressions and many instructions.  In the evening we had the great chance to take part in a traditional Thai Khantoke dinner, where we had our first contact with sticky rice, laab, pork skin and lots of new things.  It was amazing!

In the following weeks we had many different projects, but every morning we started with our daily routine work: feeding the cats (we have three big ones and seven kittens), cleaning the goat house, watering the seeds, turning the compost and cleaning the pig house.  Despite the cats, there are our two pigs - Notorious P.I.G. and Miss Juicy - and we have lots of goats and rabbits and two water buffalos.  There is also a very nice dog called Nickie living on the farm.  

In the first week we were really impressed by the ‘Jungle cooking’ we did on the farm, a task that we did with the staff from the Barge program.  Every single meal was prepared in a traditional way and it was such a nice atmosphere.  We were glad to get to know all the secrets of preparing a nice meal with such simple tools.  

Nearly every day there are students from the school at the farm, spending their time at ‘Young Farmers’ Club’, ‘Farm Fun’ or the special ‘Bug Club’.  We also host a lot of students from all over the world organized by the Visiting Schools Program (VSP) who learned about organic farming and sustainability through different tasks:  the Bicycle Blender, making mud bricks, making biodegradable soap, gardening, learning about healthy food, enter the amazing world of compost and being together with our animals.  

While we were here, we learned many new things that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.  The Three-Generation Farm is an organic farm with chemical fertilizers and no use of chemical pesticides.  We use a lot of natural self-made compost and natural ways to keep the insects away from the plants, such as planting flowers in front of every plot so the insects will be more attracted to the flowers than to the plants.  The farm is divided up according to King Rama IX’s sufficiency economy philosophy, which means that 30% of the land is reserved for water, 30% for growing rice, 30% for planting vegetables and 10% for animals.  

The following weeks we had lots of different tasks to do.

We built six new enclosures for the rabbits so that boys and girls could finally be separated.  We also made lots of flower hanging baskets out of old school footballs and basketballs, and sold them at the monthly community market held on-campus. We painted them and with Chrissie we planted beautiful flowers in them and all of them were sold!  We worked with Nicki, the resident dog, on the farm to make her more confident and familiar with the people around and really enjoyed the time with her.  

One day we all were really excited, as the veterinarian came to check our female goats:  finally, five of them are pregnant! Unfortunately we will not see the babies as they will be born in January after our departure, but we wish them all the best.

We learned how to grow mushrooms in a special way and we had lots of fun.  We started to re-plaster the mud-brick oven and were excited to see the result.  We also painted the tyres in the pumpkin tunnel where the Young Farmers planted their pumpkins.  Another really interesting project was our ‘compost project’.  We started, after hours of research, three new compost methods on the farm and want the students to join by taking the temperature, the moisture and the pH value every day.  We are excited by developments so far.  

One of our highlights was the ‘Farm Camp’.  

We had three really great girls for two weeks on the farm and we had such a wonderful time together.  All the activities were so much fun and we really enjoyed the time together.  We hope the girls had a great time too and we are sure they will never forget all the lessons about sustainability and care for the nature they learned.  

What we will really miss when we leave will be the English lessons together with our farmers.  Every afternoon after work we spent one hour together to teach them some English and learn some words of Thai.  It was so much fun every time and we hope the farmers will continue learning English!

Last but not least we want to thank Chrissie who made everything possible.  We really enjoyed our time with all the people on the farm, thank you for all the new things we were allowed to learn and thank you for making us feel welcome every time.  

[Christopher (25) and Carina (23) from Germany were willing workers on the Three-Generation organic farm for three months at the end of 2012.]

For more information about WWOOF volunteer opportunities at the Three-Generation Farm contact Chrissie at chrissieb@threegeneration.org.
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