retroblogging

It is transition day, we are stationed at a guest house in Chiang Dao for mid-course seminar with ouir professor, surrounded by jungle laden mountains. Tomorrow we head up to the upland villages, but now I am prepared to unleash that which has never been seen in the world of blogging... the retroblog.

10/6/09: I find myself perched atop the stoop - a red varnished wooden staircase... wait wait wait.... I can't lie to you all. I am no longer on the stoop. It was suh an idealic place to find myself with the gleaming moon and cacauphonous crickets and all... but upon my mission to brush my teeth prior to writing I was intercepted by some freshly steamed taro (I think). Purple and soft and sweet potato tasting, my KuhnMa was bagging it in preperation for her 3 AM trip to the market in Chiang Mai tomorrow. There she will sell the taro along with an abundance of fresh organic produce to Chiang Mai urbanites. The taro sucked me in, no doubt, but what kept me?
Well, my KuhnPaw was utilizing the piece of technology still most relevant in this village of 1000 families, the television. Although they cook most of their meals on an open fire, my family has a TV. And on that TV was the infamous Thai soap opera. Think green screens, drama, and bad fight scenes all in a language you barely understand!
So now, I am not on the stoop overlooking the boxes of organic produce from the farm ready for the market tomorrow or the raised wooden skeleton structures in my yard for storing and drying bamboo shoots or the many dogs roaming the street or the two concrete cylinder fish hatcheries down in the backyard. Instead I am in bed... in the hallway of the tiny second story, surrounded by a mosquito net.
Yes you guessed it, we are in Mae Ta, a small village south of Chiang Mai, situated in an intermontane basin. After being lured into high external input babycorn monocropping for a frozen dinner across the world, they have made an epic reversal, with a third of the village subscribing to the co-op, producting organic agriculture and living a much higher quality of life. Most of the families we are staying with have climbed out of the fertilizer debt, recovered from the health issues that go along with chemical farming, and taken control of their agricultural susbsistence. The farms are gorgeous, dense polycultures planted within the forest without any pestecides or herbecides or artificial fertilizer. They use co-cropping and biodiversity and natural pesticides like smelly plants (basil works well). The co-op provides loans when needed and keeps the money local. The farm we visited today had 100+ edible species on it - that is 100 more than many commodity farms in the west which are growing food for not humans but machines and animals. The first few years after the switch are highly labor intensive, but after that you have a diverse, resilient, fertile farm which often yields more than a monocrop.
But what is most astounding is how much the farmers know about it all. We followed Paw Pot aroudn like ducklings as he stopped at every niche to smell and taste the plant and describe (through a translator usually) the beneficial characteristics of the species.
I live with one of these families. Using the squat toilet, taking cold bucket showers, sipping rice whiskey, eating mass quantities of home grown sticky rice - these are just some of the trivialities of everyday life. These are a free people, free from the colonialism of mainstream agriculture. They can work when they want and rest when they need to, and have all they need on their trees and in their land. Tomorrow we will go out to the farm with KuhnPaw to do some pickin. and who knows what else. Thinking of everyone back homeway.