Our rice adventure finished. For five days we had the opportunity to work on an organic farm, learning the secrets of rice production and observing daily life of rather non-stereotypical farmer. It started with meeting Tor by chance on the stairs of supermarket, three hours before the appointed time. We arrived earlier to Bangkok, planning to stop for coffee and wait for the right hour, but Tor put us immediately in the middle of the action and after 10 minutes we already got to know the names and prices of his rice and we were selling it to worker of Uni level.
Then, four hours by car, amazing dinner and we arrived to the Tor’s house in Korat, located approximately 40 kilometers from his farm. Before we visited the farm itself, we spent one day in his shop packaging and weighing rice, cleaning rice soaps, preparing rice for transport and discovering other secrets of working on the organic cultivation. The next two days we explored a lot rice fields as well as other parts of the Thai countryside and learned how to mill rice using manually operated machines. It’s really hard work, often literally, given that one sack of rice is 80 kg! As an exchange we got a lot of good food in a variety of Thai restaurants and surprises like 9 black cats on the farm, visit in the manufacture of silk or pottery village, breakfast in the temple and a visit to the incredible community of people who choose to live together in the forest, produce their own food and cosmetics, and generally live without money, devoting themselves to meditation, helping the society and staying in harmony with nature.
Our farmer, Tor, turned out to be absolutely amazing man, ready to share his work, thoughts, experiences. His approach to life gave me a lot of thoughts and certainly it will be an unforgettable part of our journey.
I also thought a lot about physical work in general, and work on a farm in particular. More on this as well as the various challenges associated with running an organic farm soon in our GoodNewsLetter:)