Sustainable Chicken Friendly Compost Seed Beds Along The Thai Burma Border.

Monsoonal doesn't just mean wet, hot & typhoon-driven deluges. Like all things in the natural world, there is perfect balance, which means the many-months wet season has its counterpart - the long dry season where NOT A DROP of rain falls for somewhere between 3 and 6 months. It forces things to be done in their natural order.

Asia has historically practiced slash & burn agriculture... in the dry season the trees drop all their leaves and create cosy little snake nests around the house, while the rice stalks baked into the dried out paddy field can't be removed without equipment far above reach in price for subsistence level farmers. The subsequent ash returned to the soil is wonderfully nourishing, but air quality suffers terribly in the hot windless season, and soil quality suffers too, without the broken down leaf matter to help increase the soil's water retention.

Composting is a relatively new idea to many Asian farmers, and something that seems like incredibly hard work in the blistering heat when setting a match to a dried out field in the cool of the evening does the job easily whilst cool beer is being applied to the spectators.

Yesterday I was out along Thailand's western border with Burma, progressing my Organic Frontiers social enterprise project with the extremely poor indigenous Karen community, which is struggling up off it's knees among shaky peace deals after more than 60 years of brutal civil war. The war continues but there are pockets of community along the border proudly creating new lives & community. These people have lost their homes and land, and also understandably lost touch with how to farm. So I was STUNNED to see really first class compost seed beds, neatly sitting out in rows, prepared and ready for the rains.

They are the handiwork of my colleague and friend, Saw Diamond Khin, affectionately know as Gyi Gyi. He is a leader in the indigenous Karen Community and runs the Karen Department of Health & Welfare.

"Is not my idea," he said modestly. "But I have to modify for the chickens. They eat the worms that we need in the compost, and they eat the seeds. This way I make a nice place for them to sit and their faeces help my seed compost."

The bamboo lattice work is made from the bamboo he grows for food in his garden (bamboo shoots being a delicacy & incredibly nutritious). He's repurposing old worn tires (yes, we drive them hard on the steep mountain roads here!) and the tires are filled with his own composted leaves. "When the rains come, I can plant seeds. We try to teach our community not to burn, and to feed themselves."

Gyi Gyi is trialling organic farm techniques in order to teach and replicate them to the community, to increase food supply and to nourish not only the many poorly fed Karen people, but also Mother Earth.

I think he was surprised to get such great feedback and he's off to scavenge more tires, as Im going to help him set up some well drained potatoe growing sites next month - potatoes literally rot in the ground during the long wet so some multi-tiered potato sites on bamboo lattice for drainage should work well.

Meanwhile we wait for the first Songkran rains to plant new seeds. Thai New Year (called Songkran) celebrates the return of the rains, with the first light rains falling usually in mid-April. And while he waits, the compost is breaking down incredibly quickly in the heat, the precious worms are safe from the hungry chickens and as they sit happily on their bamboo thrones, they're also inadvertently contributing their little bit. 😉

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