Organic farming & seed saving at PunPun

The news of a friend meeting me in Laos in August suddendy "created" extra time for me in Thailand. I decided to spend it in the community farm of "PunPun", thus converting from cyclo-traveling to farming.

"PunPun" means in Thai "1000 seeds". It is located between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, in a beautiful setting made out of fruit trees, ricefields and green hills. It was funded by Jon Jandai and his companions as a "self reliance center" and has become quite reknowned over the years. Between 20 and 25 thai and foreigners now live there, in houses made out of ecomaterial. They grow their food and collect seeds to give away for free. Visitors can also find there a little coffee shop & store with home-made or locally grown products.

Beyond experimenting a more sustainable and slow life for themselves, PunPun's inhabitants try to spread the word. Jon Jandai has become quite famous with his Ted Talks and YouTube videos. And a central task at PunPun is to organize conferences and workshops (on eco building, fermented products - they make cheese and Kombucha juice 😍, seed saving, mindfulness, health, environment, etc.). This in turn makes for a subtantial source of income, which can be used as wages for the inhabitants and for buying complementary groceries to put food on the table : PunPun hosts year-round many volunteers, who come both to help and learn, and also need to be fed !

We were between 6 and 9 volunteers while I was there. Since I was most of the time the only non-thai, the experience was overall very... meditative (I could not understand much of what people were saying or what was going on !).
Nevertheless, I learned a lot. In 15 days, I had the opportunity to pickle many fruits and vegetables, sometimes using them directly for cooking (mangos, lemons, chilis, beans, local herbs snd leaves...), to help in the garden (weeding, trimmming, protecting fruits from the insects), to plant tomatoes, mangoes and even rice (which involves a lot of splashing in the mud !). I also learned how to make soap (it is very easy !).
(Following part in a second post...)Read more