Vang Vieng: the Organic Farm and Idyllic Countryside

David milks a goat at the Organic Farm outside Vang Vieng.


These were the best behaved goats I've ever milked. Goats are intelligent creatures of habit and these animals were in the habit of being patient and standing still as they were milked.


One of the young workers...he also attended English classes at a nearby school started by the farm. The Organic Farm (as it is called) solicits international volunteers to help teach English and to help with goat chores. Unlike WWOOF farms, this place charges volunteers a bit of money for accommodation and food.


Amazingly, this farm is just upriver of where the tubing starts. (See post below.) And during the afternoons, the loud music from the riverside bars blasts onto the farm and was supposedly responsible for the death of their sensitive silkworms.


Part of the drying process to make tea from mulberry leaves. The Organic Farm also makes juices and wine from their mulberries.


David gathers up the goats' breakfast.


All of the goats live on the second story of two barns, so the goat manure falls through or is swept through the slats of wood to the level below. Here there are bins of goat manure with red worms, resulting in black gold compost.


On a road outside town...




Corin and David take photos on a bike ride to the Blue Lagoon.


Rice


Reclining Buddha in Phoukham Cave near the Blue Lagoon...

camp joy revisited

When I first posted photos of Camp Joy, I was checking my watch to leave for the airport to fly to Argentina. So, I was in a hurry and inevitably left out a bunch of good images from 2007 now seen here...

Jim Nelson rests after a hard day's work with Ruby dog as his pillow.

cucumber and my feet

me

Angie from Austria under the yum yum tree

Marcelo visiting and climbing the yum yum tree

Herman

Bim pulling up carrots

Maggi

the Linden tree

Isaac

Haven and Josh

So many jars of deliciousness for the Wreath Sale

Finca de la Huella

I spent a little over two weeks WWOOFing in Finca de la Huella (way and footprint) of Olga, Jan, Inti, Tane and Teo. They live in Vaqueros in the province of Salta in the Northwest of Argentina close to Bolivia and Chile. They were very generous giving me my own room in the downstairs of their house. The weather was really nice - like summer - and their fresh goat yogurt was the best I´ve ever had. Jan was from New Zealand and Olga from Buenos Aires. They lived together in Chile including on Easter Island before settling down and buying land north of the city of Salta.

Olga, Jan, Teo, Tani: One morning there was no gas and so we made a fire outside to heat up the necessary morning maté.

a mural outside their home on the wall of the rain-collecting cistern

Jan built their beautiful home from adobe and wood. The silver box on the left is a solar oven.

Jan with his long kiwi legs was always walking faster than me even when carrying the daily bucket of milk (or in this photo, whey).

Teo, the cute 4 year old. I read him kids´stories and my third day in his house he asked me if I could stay forever.

There were lots of cute cabritas that were only a few weeks old on the farm. I think there were over 30 goats on the farm, but Jan said it was bad luck to count them.

Most of the animals mixed together in the barnyard: goats, chickens, geese, ducks, sheep, and roosters

I plucked chickens (roosters) for the first time in my life on this finca. Jan held the birds upside down and pulled on their heads to kill them and then we stripped them of their feathers. Here Jan is showing me how it is done.

una papa de aire (potato of the air)

School children from the region came on educational field trips to visit the farm and learn about animals, utilizing natural resources, recycling, growing vegetables and making bread. The kids on the farm were homeschooled (which is illegal in Argentina); Jan and Olga believe strongly in the importance of educating children about the environment and their spiritual selves. They are proud of their 16 year old Tani who is in his 3rd year of studying Physics at the local university. Inti (not pictured in any of these photos) prefers basketball over futbol, though all of the boys each support an Argentine club soccer team.

The kids were eager to peek in on the bunnies. The bunnies are not pictured; I guess I wasn´t motivated to photograph them after spending the first few day cleaning the stinky crap out of their cages.

Horses by moonlight...There were over 20 horses on the farm of other owners who paid Jan and Olga to pasture their animals there.

the full moon rising with horses in a pasture in the foreground