Grandpa's Organic Farm

Working as a Wwoofer on an organic farm can sometimes feel like you have been placed in some kind of strange reality TV show with the exception that everybody is fully dressed and there is not goal of trying to create drama. It would definitely be an interesting case study in community living. We are thrown together with a bunch of random people and expected to live, eat , and work together. There is also somewhat of an employee to worker relationship between the owner of the farm and the Wwoofers. We have found this to be both challenging and rewarding at times. In general we have gotten along well with the Woofers and have found common ground around the ideology that surrounds the growing of organic food.

I guess that leads me to our experience at the last farm we stayed at. We were the first Wwoofers to ever volunteer on this farm and so some disorganization and growing period was to be expected from the beginning. The land is owned by a seventy year old Thai man referred to as Grandpa. Grandpa is best known for his organic fertiliser, and is very proud of the fact that the King once stopped by to check out his farm and donated a tree to his farm. Grandpa speaks exclusively in Thai and it didn't matter that we don't understand he continued to speak to us in Thai. At first we used body language to convey that we didn't understand and this resulted in him repeating himself which was not very helpful. Eventually after receiving advice from others we learned to agree to what he was saying and this avoided the repeating of communication that we couldn't understand. During our stay, we grew quite fond Grandpa and his instructions (particularly when they included charades). Grandpa is renting the land out to an American named Steven who is growing organic food for a health therapy that involves eating all organic, mostly raw foods. We were under the impression from the Wwoofer website that Steven and Grandpa were working together, which in all fairness may have been true when the web posting was created, but was certainly not true when we arrived. We heard from Steven that there had been a fallout just a few days before our arrival. Most communication between Grandpa and Steven is handled by a very nice Thai man named Taw who speaks very good English. During the first week and a half of our stay, Steven would talk about tasks that needed to be done but because of health reasons and the therapy he is doing, he was unable to visit the farm very often. We would receive general instructions in the evening of what to work on the next day, but when we arrived at the farm Taw or Grandpa would have other tasks lined up for us to do. Steven is having only vegetables that come from North America seeded on the farm. This seemed a little strange to us because we have eaten lots of good local vegetables, but we thought it would be good experience for when we get back home. I think Steven is doing this in part to fill the requirements of the diet and partly because he prefers things that come from North America. Nobody at the farm really has any experience with growing these varieties of vegetables including Steven. I think this is fine as long as you are prepared to have lots of patience and a willingness to learn. We were told in our garden workshops in Calgary that plants want to grow. There were lots of mistakes made with planting vegetables too close together and we are assuming there is probably some problems with the soil, but overall the plants are surviving and in time look like they will produce a crop. For a first try I would consider this an overall success given the experience they were working with and that they only started working on this project four months ago. One day Steven arrived at the farm and proceeded to flip out, cursing, swearing, and making racist comments towards the Thai workers repeatedly calling them "fucking midgets". According to us, they are doing the best that they know how to grow unfamiliar produce for him. He proceeded to rip out rows of tomato plants that were seeded too close together - some with tomatoes growing on the plants - after we had spent the past week pruning all these plants. We would have been able to deal with the plant destruction; after all they are his own plants and he is free to do what wants with them, but the racist comments towards the Thai people really violates our values. Our desire on this trip is to work alongside the Thai people learning a culture that is different from our own. Steven had given hints of a bias throughout our stay. Saying how much he really dislikes some of the things here in Thailand and having lots of things shipped from North America. The only things he seemed to like about Thailand was the low cost of things and the chance of finding a Thai wife. Given this situation, we made plans on our next day off to move on early. To me this was a shame because there is so much potential for this farm. Steven was a very good host towards us, going out of his way to provide us with bikes so that we could get around better and he had a bottle of wine around for us to drink in the evenings even though he doesn't drink. We also really enjoyed our time with Taw. He took us to a hill tribe village one day during our lunch break when he was looking at some other land for possibly expanding the farm. We had a good time at this farm and it's situated in a very beautiful spot. I hope that this was perhaps just things getting ugly for a few days and Steven is able to make amends with the owner of the land and at the very least if things cannot work out he would treat Thai people with the humanity they deserve. As for us, I think we need to deal better with some of the general issues we picked up on earlier in our stay and hopefully develop a group consensus. This can be difficult in a relationship that is only expected to last a couple of weeks and where the owner has control over your living accommodations it will probably always be easier to let things slide. In order to live successfully in this type of community, or perhaps any, it appears important to not let what is important to you be overshadowed by the comfort of letting things you feel are wrong pass by. In the book I am reading called "A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada" it refers to the strength of First Nations communities being able to promote both the interests of the group and the individual. I can see when I am living in a community setting just how important it is to find ways to respect the needs and wants of each individual with what is best for the community as a whole. I feel like there is lots to learn in this area and hope that situations like I have described can help us discover better ways to live in this delicate balance.