At this farm producing rice, rubber and fruit a few hours northwest of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, I worked alongside Ashi, a refugee from Burma. Together we helped prepare the paddy for planting rice and although he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Lisu, his hill tribe language, we communicated with gestures and smiles.
The paddies were first plowed and then flooded to kill off the grass and weeds.
Main house where I stayed. It was a bit strange showing up to this farm and realizing that no one there had expected my arrival. I had been in communication with a Canadian guy who runs the farm with his Thai/Burmese brother-in-law, but he had left for other hemispheres and failed to mention my arrival to others on the farm. However, even though it took the main boss about week to get around to asking my name, the farm was used to receiving WWOOF volunteers and they were well-prepared to feed me and put me to work.
Jackfruit was consumed almost daily.
Lunch...we usually had pork and rice three times a day but pictured here are noodles.
An unidentifiable inedible fruit. There were several fruits on the farm whose names I was never able to figure out.
Some of the cuter swine...there were over 100 pigs living on the farm, so it was no wonder that we ate pork for most of the meals.
One day this pig was killed by one of its own and so the workers slaughtered it and cooked it up...
Intestines!
Alea posed with a snake killed by one of his workers in the fields. He cooked it up with a red curry, which was spicy and delicious. Despite all the bones, it was some of the nicest and leanest meat I have eaten.
A view of some of the rice paddies.
A patch of rice to be transplanted around to all the other areas.
Here you can see corn in the foreground (grown to feed the pigs), rice and several coconut trees.
Even on an organic farm, the chemicals are often not far away. Here an adjacent field gets sprayed.
