Foreverford

Bangkok it is, my friend went to the Skin Hospital on Asoke, Asoke Skin Hospital.

I went Bangkok Hospital and was treated well in Bkk but it appeared the focus was on cosmetic and very very fancy set up just a short distance from main hospital. Any more info on Asoke would be appreciated

At 400 baht per rai to till and build rows that's 40,000 baht per year. How can you justify an investment of 500,000 baht and up.for a tractor?

i wasn't trying to justify it but as i know myself things change,maybe you get more land etc etc maybe you will start a little business hiring out the tractor,its amazing what jobs you find to do to keep you occupied when you own a tractor,but that may just be my opinion.

the reason im selling is we bought it to give the family an alternative income and hopefully make them self supportive but my brother in law(the driver) has gone out of the country to work now and im not here full time to make good use of it,also,i have noticed the thai's don't have the same attitude towards business as english and they treat it as a nice garden feature and dont like it getting too dirty,instead of what it is built for.

just a thought,don't shoot the messenger

I was thinking towards lotsa gots way because you aren't giving the tractor man 400 a rai because a 6610 can burn nearly 2000 baht a day in fuel, there is other maintenance costs and....etc etc. But I wondered if yours was 4wd and does it have a roto-tiller (rotovator is the correct term). Kubotas are very expensive to maintain but if you don't hire it out and have some other uses for it with your 100 rai now or in the future it will be an option for someone who is going to do a ton of tractor work. Otherwise paying someone else to severe a couple of fingers or put in Casava, rice or whatever for few years until you change ideas or continue is generally always the best bet unless you are a good operator/mechanic. Fords Forever but thanks for that Kubota that pulled me out of the klong the other day

On the retail side,

It is the right time of year for the sugar producers to announce a nationwide shortage,

with purchases limited to 2kg per person

I'm really slow so maybe some education on how this works because as a quasi farmer (only by birth) my brain goes sideways on me too often and 13.9 baht for Hom Mali this year was ugly for the bottom line boo hoo. Anyhow sugar and palm oil prices are regulated at the market by govt maximum prices. Thailand ran out of Palm Oil and had a crisis and ended up importing stock to refine. thailand exported a bunch of the stuff. Exports of sugar i thought I may have heard were regulated. How do these refineries get stock if the crop sells at an export price that is in fact higher than the price that the producers can put the stuff on the shelf. Why would anybody who is now harvesting palm oil not sell internationally if the national market is faced with the inability to purchase raw and refine the oil at less the 47 baht the retail "on the shelf"? I'm pretty slow and don't really get it unless the govt is buying the stuff at a loss for the refineries at times to support their policy of fixed prices. Flailing in a Ford

Hi folks

Wet enough to surf here in the UK today !! so thats what I've been doing.Some quite interesting info on organic fertiliser and foliar feed here link

cheers for now J

That's a good link to a great company with lots of information and interesting, useful products: Peaceful Valley Farm Supply at www.groworganic.com I've visited their nursery in the Grass Valley area of the beautiful foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Get their hard copy catalog if you can and it will keep you busy for hours studying all the cool stuff and useful tips; it's a learning experience in itself. Don

Hey Doc what's happenin'? Are you still Thailand? I remember reading a thing in the Post that makes me think your footloose if not fancy free or such. Anywho those folks have been around from before the wheel I think but I remember them from the 70's, a great source.

Here's some new info posted on our mother link and I'm sure we'll get some response on this one as it appears to look quite promising. Farm with Fords

PM me please asap and I will post your info on our Organic Farming Forum

http://www.sjonhause...pterocarps.html

So gotta lost it is off to Tak to record the largest, a 700+ year older, sounds like fun. I guess I'm the proud owner of a couple dozen 'carps as I'm darn near deaf and couldn't really make out the Thai name of a tree Fruity has growing at his place but now teung was what it sounded like to me. I hope to get about 100 more after Songkran.

Hey oodii dee dee I just bought a little specimen of a bamboo that is from ones that are as big around as me. It was grown from seed which I imagine is rather unique as bamboo can be split quite simply to propogate. It will be interesting as it won't be a clone of another but unique unto itself. I'll split it up a bunch (I paid 1000 baht for the specimen and kick myself in the butt for not doing last it year because I thought 1000 was too expensive). I wonder if Sequoia Gigantus might survive in the wet mountains up north? Fords in Forest For Me

So my car of cars wasn't the Ford 5000 industrial tractor that served me endlessly in Monterey or the robin egg blue 62 Ford Falcon Country Sedan with the fake woody exterior with the brown vinyl replacement for the contact paper fake wood sides but in fact a Chevy. My dad bought a brand new 65 Chevy 3/4 ton Custom Cab Pickup. All the kids in the family cut their teeth on that. I ended up buying it from him in the late 70's and it was still basically all original from the way he ordered it from the factory. 4 speed tranny with compound low gearing matched to a rear end that was 4:11. the original 283 V8 was replaced with a 327 corvette that we bored it out .060 over. Top speed in 2nd gear might be 20 mph (1st gear was about 7) but never even got near that unless it was a full out drag race ( nobody could get close for the first hundred yards but by then i was in 4th and would shut it down) but that was very rare, but i'd play with the punks once in a blue moon. With the 4:11's you could put your buddies on the rear bumper and do wheelies if you really wanted (never did, I raced a bit for a few feet at times but wasn't much into beating up my vehicles because I'd be the one fixing and paying for that stupidity). That truck had to haul ten of thousands of tons of loads. a buddy and I cut and split and hauled close to 30 cords of Eucalyptus some close to a meter and half in diameter in la little over a week. I was a regular at the local dump hauling trash et al for pay in the big city to earn rent and school money. A buddy and I once demo'd and hauled out an entire house in a day (less perimeter foundation), it was Homelight chain saws forever in those days for me unless I was climbing in in the trees then McCullough Macs were my saws of choice. I eventually bought some big (in those days) 12x16.5 10 ply motor home wheels and tires for the back for a bit more strength and to get away from the original split rims (remember those guys?) but didn't know that GM had put a recall on these buggers due to bad welds. One run down the Baja and only abouut 30 miles from the end of the tip and 1500 miles on the road the pavement was blown out and I hit it at night and broke the left rear wheel off, 8 lugs and the center stayed with me and went off a cliff the tire and the rest of the wheel kept going down the road. I have claustraphobia with seat belts and refuse to use them (I've paid more than a few 200 baht fines here in the LOS) and that day after rolling a bit i was thrown out on my head into the desert and rocks and cactus and days later when I could move again i saw that the roof of the truck was squashed flat down on the the seat of the cab and the steering stood higher than the roof, the rear axle had been blown thru the bed and the whole truck was bent into a V. But the truck still didn't let me down as there was this red headed freckled face local policia chick that wanted to use and abuse my body and she was messing with me in the back of the cop car as they were dragging me down to the yard to extract a bunch of money for various and assorted Mexican justice needs and fines. My body was cricking and cracking, my concussed brain was post ictal and there were cactus spines in parts of my body I couldn't see or feel. I knew that woman was going leave me in a pile of used up flesh til she saw my too cool brand new (first time I ever did it and with my fire department salary I splurged) stereo in the truck. Long story short she ended up with my baby and I got away with my body (and soul?). I'd give all my other vehicles up and more to have that fine machine back again. I don't think they have made too many vehicles better than they did in 1965. I truly believe that was the finest year of auto production in the history of US car manufacturing. What would that mint used 1965 Ford Cobra with the 429 for $4995 be worth today if I could have scraped the change together to grab that. Iffa iffi Forever Fords and a Chevy or two

Was there anything more like a woman than a tomato.(My Brother In Law stopped by with this bit of Thai wisdom) If you give them everything they could ever need or want they give back next to nothing. If you sort of forget you ever planted them you're playing catch up to keep building a framework that will support them. Luckily we're dealing with the latter case this year, but it was not always thus.

Now is that the tomatoes you are talking about or the woman?

It would be difficult for a mere mortal to comprehend how busy we are.

The 49 rai, you saw, are near completion. 49 Excavator hours, about the same tractor hours with may be 30 to go.

Must go to supervise several time a day, it not, it will become moonscape.

It started to rain, we need to plow and plant cassava on 60 rai. Finding workers when everybody wants to do the same thing; it's not eassy.

After the rains softened the rice paddies, we have about 50 rai to plow as well.

This morning, I just finished spraying the mango farm, the fruit is heavy and the bugs are coming!

The pizza oven is nearing completion, I must supervise very close.

Nobody around here ever saw refractive bricks, mortar and cement.

On the other hand, your Mexican tomatoes are doing fine. See attached.

Don't ask who's what, I lost the tags a long time ago.

Best regards.

Oh baby looks mighty fine indeed. I think you have a couple of Louisiana specials a "Ciudad Juarez" a "Glacier" and i can't remember my own name and what all else but I have managed to have most of mine documented (wife did too out on the small farm and then her sister "cleaned up a bit and thru away all the tags so it's mysteryville there but will be fun and will try to collect "hybrid" seeds there to create new strains, so all is well. I may try to germinate a bunch more in April to try a rainy season experiment under the roofed area. I told you that new big plot wasn't a lot of work and less than 150 hours is not bad. As always supervision is the key to any project like that, with my tank tower i THOUGHT WE HAD AN UNDERSTANDING ABOUT THE LADDER ON THE INSIDE AND WHEN IT CAME TO THAT TIME THE BOSS SAID HE THOUGHT ABOUT AND WASN'T REALLY SURE SO HE DECIDED TO FABRICATE AND ATTACH TO THE OUTSIDE INSTEAD OF SPend two minutes making a phone call and he pput it on the outside . that is one beauteous piece of oith you are preparing. Tomatoes and Fords forever

Why burger man you talk of the elixer of life, the cure of all that ails you, the nectar of the gods, such a delightful thing it is. I ask you one question, how many times do you see people (usually very smiley specimens of the opposite gender) dancing on the tops of tables after partaking of various forms of alcohol. I'm sure your answer may run something like "probably as many times as i don't see it after the drinking of "the mezcal". Tequila is like mezcal and if the agave is not grown and processed in the state of Jalisco you aren't supposed to call it "tequila'' similar to the French with their region wines such as champagne.

Go avo go bro, good luck with the set of fruit this year you got to be excited. I was at Soidog's this year in Buriram and he has a tree about 8 years old and nary 30 feet tall a monster and he said it just went off crazy this year blooming and the fruit he says is so full of oil he greases track layer dozers with just the stuff that runs off his hands when he is eating them. I ate some of his frozen (yep he's got a way to do it) stuff and wow you betcha I'll be around getting a hundred kilos or so if I can for quacamole and salads and for seed. where are you located? We got a few small ones in the ground from seed and finally got a few out on Highway 24 from the nurseries. I want to have at least as many as you do and hopefully more some day as it is my favorite food even better than pinto beans. the debate will go on about grafted or seeded trees we had a tree dern near a dozen grafts on it in a city home and could not get a single edible avo, when it was a half meter in diameter at ground level I threw in the towell and planted a little 2 meter one that was blooming in a year and bingo the big tree started setting its first fruit go figure. It's a long term experiment but I'll be planting everything i can and looking to get some real monster hass seeds this year. When consistent quality starts to occur here in thailand we should end up forming a co-op similar to Sunsweet of CalAvo in California to look to market these jewells because there is a huge demand from any and all Mexican Restaurants here in the country and all of the top hotels and restaurants throughout the country that are all too aware of the value of having good quailty high oil avocadoes. In Hua Hin we have a constant supply of Australian hass "culls" (the smallest little avocados I've seen for market, other than the 20 for a dollar midgets that appear sometime on the roadside stands in Califfornia) at about 48 to the box and they always are in the range of 60-90 baht each. They make it on quality and consistentcy but definitely not taste as they aren't that great but they definitely aren't bad just middle of the road runts. I' have fig to transplant and grew up on the things so I won't take no for an answer and we will be eating figs in Burriam some day even if I have to grow them in a greenhouse. Choke Dee and a Ford for me

Most farang who invest in trying to do business in Thailand, wind up spending and spending - and perhaps make a little return. I say 'most' not 'all'. Some do well, and some don't even get their laundry paid for. the odds are about the same as with MLM.

Another factor: if you try to get something going that Thais don't relate to, then it's likely you're catering to farang only, if that. Example: a juice bar with smoothies. Ok, in the case of large tract of land, you'd either grow some crop that Thais relate to, in that case you don't get much return (because many other Thais grow the same thing), or you try growing something farang can relate to, and then you'd have to have a spiffy marketing campaign and/or some great connection for off-loading your crop.

I've found, in a quarter century visiting Thailand, that Thais are slow to catching on to a new thing, and all the while are very tight with how they spend - unless it's for things that carry a prestige factor, like a new car or an ostentatious house by a busy road - to impress others. They'll spend a lot on things to impress, then go to the 25 baht rice soup food stall, because they save 5 baht by not going to the 30 baht place next door which has a lot better food.

A niche as Issan Aussie talks about as being one of the true chances to work out some profit from farming here in LOS. Rog try to think towards the Kings thoughts of Sustainability in your factory. Start planting trees to be used in your furniture building. Can your woodstock become completely farm grown trees? organically grown in ten or less years? It's very possible, I got an idea the day we started scatterring the bones of ol Fruity as I observed some hardwood indigenous Issan trees he had started and it looks like seven years may too long to keeep them in the ground, that is beyond fast and they look laser straight. He only had a couple and I hope that they grow to the heavens to pay him a visit but I know a few folks that have a few waiting to go in the ground at it will be fun to slab up a few in a few years and see how they dry in a kiln and outside in the dry season. Quite a remarkable thing and it's got me excited the secret now will be learning a good way to propogate. buck em up and drag em out in ya ol Ford Tractor Forever

Hey SGD buddy fellow what's the game man? you put it out there and a bunch of us try to dial you in one way or another and not a peep or word in response. Hayek when I put something out to "Stir it Up" I straight out tell everybody this is just food for thought. You talking about our life here and we are sharing it with you and a little respect would be at least a short response to the many of questions that others have requested of yo u in regards to what you want. If in fact you have 100-200 Million to invest there are ways that many here can try to guide you to what you may need to start studying. But be assured the real farmers in the bunch (dirt and grease under their fingernails and maybe an assorted knuckle ripped off or at least not infected and recovering) are going to say do your homework and start studying your info. Well big boy it appears you might not want to be doing your homework here and your lack of response says it's probably tinme to shine you on just tlike bunches of other real estate optimists that have wasted our time and energy (yeah try to find me responding to something simioar returning from Obama's inauguration in Kenya and gettting another fellow looking to try to put under a small farm landowner and get his plot so he could speculate on the real estate all in the guise (is that correct? screw wikepedia) of saying he wants to farm. I was not in a good frame of mind and he did not receive a cordial response but after the outrage that was thrown back at me by members I finally came around and suggested a plan whereby he could start towards self-sufficiency and follow his desire to farm. Ha ha ha ha on me and you; days later the fellow straight up posts that he really wants a piece that he knows he can sell a few years later and make a good profit. A pure speculator and not a bone of a farmer anywhere in his body).

There's a fellow suggesting you make a furniture factory or whatever else destruction of farm land to achieve some kind of profit from the "land"? I know you said you wanted 3-4 million ( I believe the assistant to the mayor of Bangkok makes close to 1/2 million in salary a year) and a suggestion of 1800 rai of Eucalyptus is nearly as radical an idea as cutting down rain forest as the land will become a barren waste but I think the initial investment of probably near 500 million is out of the ball park if in fact this will return 3-5 million yearly on average over the next 15-20 years.

So SGD are you real? or are you just here trying to " stir it up" and waste time and energy while laughing at helpful folks with good intentions?

my apologies on the last post as i reread what you originally put out and you did sort of say this is a bit of "stir it up" so again I was a bit over the top with my last response but still it would be interesting to see what you feel from what people have put out so far

"Can't do without the one and strive to do without the other.

peace and love and Fords Forever"

Mr Ford !

Reading in between the lines of your first post, it was a difficult year in your neck of the woods !

Hopefully this one will be better for you.

Looking forward your wild Mexican tomatoes and I can definitely use some tractor induced remodeling advice; on a nice piece I am in the middle of acquiring.

Mango season coming up, busy taking care of my trees also just finished pulling about 30 rais of cassava with about another 30 to go.

From the back yard, it's a shot of some nice giant lemons for you.

Best regards.

sorry about the bad luck you are having with your lemons but it appears the only way you are going to keep those trees from comitting suicide and breaking off their branches is by picking the darn things and making juice (a yuk a yuka ha ha). I will try to PM so we can exchange phone #'s to get together.

Lot's going on and Soidoggeroo what do you say. About a week or two ago I got Issan Aussie's compost inside and out of the Ford Wagon hauled it back fro Si Sa Ket and took your advice and got it on and around the ground I was preparing to transplant the exotic tomatoes that you got. The planting holes got a bunch of it and a good dose of EM. I'm told (in the US freezing waiting to be in Death Valley for the full moon ande the first day of spring and hopefully the biggest beautiest spring bloom of wild flowers in the last 1000 years) they look extremely impressive now. after thinning each bag to the strongest plant I did take your advice and cut nearly all the leaves and branches off and planted them very deeply with just a few branches left. Corn carrots and cucumbers (the half meter long kind with the edible skins) have continued to be palnted and the pumpkins are doing well but I fear they are going to suffer from lack of water while we are away but time will tell. The iron mongers have fisnished the "Ban Badan" as i call it, "well house". It's really a "Ban Tahnk" " Tank House" but actually it's just a bunch of pieces of galvanised that goes up nearly ten meters and has two 2000 gallon tanks on top of it holding a lot of nicely warmed air at the moment. I'll get back and manage a bunch of valves and switches and flow restrictors and pipes and valves and ....... well a couple of more ........ and well anywho the well is in the tankhouse is up in the air the tanks are on top the electricity is there and sweet abundant water flows with a flick of a switch. The steel structure will get covered in wood and insulation and have a few doors and windows put it and will become a two story (it's 3x3 meters long and wide) house for now. the second floor south facing window is going to have a full time steel window shade which will have a coil of HDPE flexible roll of black water pipe and that will be the hot water system. I managed to repair and increase the size of the border levees that were damaged in the massive floods this year. Lot's of it is up (well not too much of lotsa it) to two meters high and i think another half of meter might do it but will need to bring out some surveying equipment when it gets that close. Still the modification of the front blade of The Ford so it works as an angle dozer is making it really go fast and good. dey ain't seen nuttin like dis in dees parts ya all. gotta go but will tell of more as the fingers thaw. me

So Jim, I suppose this snake oil saleman couldnt interest you in some compost and biochar? A little soil drench, no oil included?

Isaan Aussie

worst type of snake oil salesman is an Aussie, but I would take all the pig shit you have. Jim

sorry dont have enough pig manure to sell it at the expense of the compost.

IA

don't worry Jimmy boy it's nothing personal he pulled the same crap (can I say that here) with me I got bags of his finished product but no raw stuff for woims and even inspected the entire operation and found no snakeskins but I was moving so fast I might have stepped on a live one and not noticed. Got a bunch of water lettuce and that sounds like the real future "oil" , snakes not even included for this charlatan or is the word chameleon. Only thing I know is that I'll throw my money his way when it comes to his products. Hell he even has it together enough to have Duroc hogs that will be just perfect in color to manage the warm tropical suns for my free range swimming hogs cycle of the year for the small farm, should finish the perimeter klong/fence before the rainy season hits I hope. Hogs, plants from water bogs, composts and teas to set your plants free, I'll put my faith in this healer of the land and soul, seller of oils of snake and castings of worms that shake. I loaded the Ford "custom" "Rung" wagon with the compost bags and worm castings and had it a half meter high on the roof (I'll haul 50% more next time I and the compost are available and will end up paying full wholesale price, I imagine, because the first deal was way too good (I'm sure part of the snake oil tradesman policy, sell it low make it the best and if they write something good and come back again and again to buy more hey maybe you're doing something right) on my side (heck a fire as dey all say dis boy so deeeranged he wanted to throw in some fine butchered hog meat for free too before I ran away from him. My daddy told me.......). Anywho I transplanted dozens of rare variety tomatoes, some wild ones included from the American desert land, that I had started on Dec 1. All these went into raise beds that I ammended that day with his "pig bio-char EM" "snake oil" compost with a helpful bunch in each hole. As I am sure Soidog can attest these were not the fittest of specimens but from Hua Hin to Issan they were survivors. Now they are exploding from the ground (according to undisclosed sources) (I'm in the US freezing enroute to the desert of Death Valley) with the corn backing them up and sprouting out of the ground in a few days. An entire previous planting of carrots was a 0% bust and in the same ground with compost we now have completely successful germination and fast growth. i can't wait for the day that his loader is up again(I/A I got the guy working on the main hydraulics, my clutch man in Prakon Chai, for the Ford and will be in touch when he finishes it up) I'll be able to test it in April, (and oh I'll geev eet a good test or two) working and dozens of pigs a week start to move through, save me a post harvest xmas litter. With that much manure even you and I jim might be able to get a bag or two of unprocessed stuff and hopefully will keep the cost down where it is now and will make the ability to haul 10-100 tons a year a reality. As of now I'll buy every bag I can get my hands on and can stuff into that old Ford wagon, sure would like to customize it into a hot rod flatbed but I/A I don't think I'm as bad a jammer as you are to be able to pull it off but maybe we could do a little trade and you take it for a while and put some jimmy jam on it though I doubt you know that much about autos (a yuk a yukka) Ford loaders full of compost Forever

1966 Red Convertable Plymouth Valiant with a slant 6 225 engine.

I loved that car and should never have sold it.

The engines ran forever.

Ohhh now that's a bad mam a jamma an alumina engine a first in America if I remember correctly

Hey SGD buddy fellow what's the game man? you put it out there and a bunch of us try to dial you in one way or another and not a peep or word in response. Hayek when I put something out to "Stir it Up" I straight out tell everybody this is just food for thought. You talking about our life here and we are sharing it with you and a little respect would be at least a short response to the many of questions that others have requested of yo u in regards to what you want. If in fact you have 100-200 Million to invest there are ways that many here can try to guide you to what you may need to start studying. But be assured the real farmers in the bunch (dirt and grease under their fingernails and maybe an assorted knuckle ripped off or at least not infected and recovering) are going to say do your homework and start studying your info. Well big boy it appears you might not want to be doing your homework here and your lack of response says it's probably tinme to shine you on just tlike bunches of other real estate optimists that have wasted our time and energy (yeah try to find me responding to something simioar returning from Obama's inauguration in Kenya and gettting another fellow looking to try to put under a small farm landowner and get his plot so he could speculate on the real estate all in the guise (is that correct? screw wikepedia) of saying he wants to farm. I was not in a good frame of mind and he did not receive a cordial response but after the outrage that was thrown back at me by members I finally came around and suggested a plan whereby he could start towards self-sufficiency and follow his desire to farm. Ha ha ha ha on me and you; days later the fellow straight up posts that he really wants a piece that he knows he can sell a few years later and make a good profit. A pure speculator and not a bone of a farmer anywhere in his body).

There's a fellow suggesting you make a furniture factory or whatever else destruction of farm land to achieve some kind of profit from the "land"? I know you said you wanted 3-4 million ( I believe the assistant to the mayor of Bangkok makes close to 1/2 million in salary a year) and a suggestion of 1800 rai of Eucalyptus is nearly as radical an idea as cutting down rain forest as the land will become a barren waste but I think the initial investment of probably near 500 million is out of the ball park if in fact this will return 3-5 million yearly on average over the next 15-20 years.

So SGD are you real? or are you just here trying to " stir it up" and waste time and energy while laughing at helpful folks with good intentions?

I had a couple of African pygmy for household cleaning chores ...

Wouldn't Burmese do a better job?

too expensive to bring to Monterey California, any poison hemlock this part of the globe?

Had some wheels even though i'm considered young (32ish).

In my garage at the moment:

1985 Jaguar XJ Veeeee 12

1969 Ford 17M RS2000 http://www.garaget.o...4ℑ=1466962

1969 Ford Capri mk1 under restoration

Ahh those memories. The car that I still regret crashing was the 1991 Ford Scorpio Cosworth. The perfect luxury cruiser for the "average Joe".

Well not so interesting as some posts but I did love my 70s? Delta 88 2 door coupe 455 4bbl. White leather seats oooh...and gas at Can 27c? a gal...

Remember me and mates drooling over the first Capri in a showroom in UK ...we were driving a Consul 375 ( remember the movie "Alfie".??..everyone's hero lol)

Now you guys are jolting the memories when you talk about Euro vehicles. I had a 69 Ford Escort Station wagon in Mombasa Kenya in the 80's I really think it may have had only three doors. No matter where I showeed up in that car everybody accused me of being a liar saying it couldn't make it out of downtown Mombasa let alone wherever I was. well it actually couldn't when i first bought it and snaked and bounced it down this back alley dirt track to my old hotel. After removing the bits of 18 wheeler tire pieces that had been cut for bushings in the tie rods so I decided to buy some more tools.... and I guess the Railway Golf Course parking lot in Nairobi and finding a Renault piston in # 2 cylinder that didn't come close to having rings that touched the sides of the walls might have made it a memorable vehicle... or was it the gear shift lever and the enire top plate of the transmission coming into my hand in the middle of a great upshift as I made the last huge grade to roll out of the rift valley (no stopping and fixing that one the car was having some serious electrical breakdown problems so shutting it off or stopping was out of the equation, it was early in the am and cool so most of the fluid decided to stay put).... no it had to be the price got that one some blame # of Kenya schillings, dam near the price of a brand new set of really good tires.....or was it the fact that I carried three spare tires and 2 extra rims and still got caught without air on the coral roads of soutcoast and had to hitchhike a ride on a cow to get repairs.

Euro cars in the 80's how abought a Fiat Lada that I was able to talk them down (these are Scots outside of St Andrews!!) to 43 pounds and still had enough tags to get me through almost a half of year. I finally learned a new word "Ahhh lahd ya got yaself a right BANGER thehhh" Yeah I heard the word banger for months after that; so what if you could see the tire through the top of the front left fender, that sucker fired up with a bang everytime I turned the key, it never missed a beat. got burned when i could only get 30 for it when i sold it but just didn't seem like I couldn't find too many takers for that great piece of Russian engineering and I had to run and dumped it. As good as a Ford forever

Foreverford brings up an interesting point about the foliage of Solanum spp. versus the Fruit.

To illustrate the point of the following observations,

Try a nibble yourself of a Solanum leaf and you'll understand that they aren't fit to eat.

A little anecdote about Eggplant leaf with Goats and Geese

This observation is across three varieties in the same garden

Aubergine big purple,

Long green

Makua hard green golf balls

Goats would previously not touch it, but over time have gained a taste for it.

Now they would ravage to the ground any that I don't protect behind electric wire

and I should say they have plenty of feed selection including dry bean hay, the best.

They also love the fruit of all three kinds, but prefer the long greens.

Goats have never touched my Tomato foliage,

but considering that I've seen them eat everything else that is supposedly toxic,

they delight in Castor and Cassava, both are supposedly no no's

I presume they eventually will try Tomato

It was reported last year that my goats tried to invade the neighbor's Potato field.

It seems from these small points of experience that everything in moderation is the key.

Geese didn't know what Eggplant foliage was, but learned to experiment,

and now are moving row by row through the garden gently removing all leaves from each plant,

then moving to the next plant, which I see as no damage, just forces the plant to put on fresh foliage

The plants are bouncing back with fresh leave never healthier

Since fresh growth is more apt to grow high on the plant, it also serves to get the leaves up higher off the soil.

Geese also have not touched Tomato foliage.

And on a totally separate note, Geese love the leaves of Guinea Cayennne Birds Eye small green & red hot chili.

they nipped every last leaf below 0.90 m...now you know how high a goose can reach on his tip toes.

I find the chili leaf tasty myself, so can understand why the geese love it.

I had a couple of African pygmy for household cleaning chores then one day there was one. Eventually I moved the one back where the other had died and immmediately it went straight for a bush of poison hemlock, I put him in a headlock and tried to manage to scrape out whatever he had gotten in his mouth and am sure that is what killed the other. It never was an issue so I just made sure I kept it down around the house area. Speaking of nasty poisonous leaf matter has anyone seen any oleander bushes growing much here in Thailand. they are a beautiful garden delight. The poor man's rose as it is called. Fords a furrowing

Some very helpful replies so far

Thanks all

TP

though i haven't seen much of it here i would highly recommend using Oleander. It grows from cuttings and will grow to 4-5 meters in no time fast. I had it at my house in Mexico and it is in the middle of the desert and just a little bit of water and it will thrive a lot water and heat and you really got something going the branches are relatively soft so it is easy to maintain and it gives off a huge mass of blooms that some folks want to call the poor man's roses. georgeous extremely dense at low levels with proper care and dense at all heights very fast and very easily able to start from cuttings. It is extremely poisonous (purported and extract of this is what was used on Romeo and Juliet). It is so poisonous that i t is rather safe in garden use as the taste and reaction by anybody unfortunate uenough to have put it in their mouth is so severe that they generally can't take a biggest enough amount of it to do any bad things to them. I haven't seen much but I'm sure it is around and like bouganvilla you just need one to find and get permission to get cuttings and you can have all you want. You can plant a few bouganvilla in between if in fact you want to create an impenetrable fence in the beginning by braiding your new boug branches a fence height the boug can be destroyed later at the roots if you don't want them to take over but you will have the barbed wire" effect of having their thorny mass mixed through your lovely soft and year round blooming poor man's roses Fords Forever

Thanks bina, baytril, I'll make a note of that and maybe will find somebody who can help out.

We've lost one more but the remaining ones are looking okay and it's been a week now so we're hoping for the best but still prepared for the worst.

According to the link Thaddeus supplied the only way it gets to mammals is conjunctivitis so, having had that once in Thailand, I'm taking great care especially sweeping the yard kicking the dust up.

We always do scrub up after handling the chickens and shoes never come into the house period so we should be safe on that front. However, being the tropics, dust is the main problem and for that reason I am glad we don't have a window in the kitchen area.

How's your water situation? You may be able to plant some grass around the house on a trail from the coop to the house. Seaside paspalum and Zoysia are two that do well and don't require a bunch of water as a thought possibly

Hi joker7

I'll be fascinated to hear the outcome

in terms of hourly Tractor rate

B350 Disk Plow

B200 Disk

B180 Seeding

=============

B730 per Rai.

x 72 Rai

===============

B52,560 Full Job

/ ?? Number of Tractor Hours

==================

B?,??? / hour

If you are able to observe the number of total hours to complete 72 rai,

then you can reach the hourly rate of the tractor.

At three successive passes over the ground,

on a relatively large field like this,

assuming long open runs,

it's a good field to work.

Having watched a similar job recently on 60 rai,

I'd guess from a distance that they were finished with the first two such passes in less than 20 hours.

If we ratio that estimate up to your 72 rai job and add a third planting pass,

It would be 36 hours,

which would come to B1,752 / hour

As I said above,

The rate here on a Ford 6610 85 hp Tractor is B600 / hour

including fuel and a good man in the seat.

That to me seems not worth the effort if I owned the tractor,

but I'm perfectly happy to be on the buying side of the deal.

A total job rate is a good measure of tractor capacity,

as the operator has no motive to go slow in order to rack up extra hours.

He will get it done as quickly as possible.

It's therefore important to have those numbers on record,

so that next time around you can bargain with reason accordingly.

Tractor men typically don't want to be confused with comparative numbers,

so don't expect a hearty welcome to your analysis.

There is probably an existing thread on this forum exactly describing tractor work parameters.

I admittedly did not search before responding here.

Boom Baby. Shock a lahkka. That's Sly and the Family Stone singing "Dance to the Music" I added the "Baby" part as man oh man I'll take the waters edge and 600 an hour but I'll take neither deal if I hit a root. tractor work is a too too bad situation if you go on a piece of land for the first time. issan Aussie will tell you about walking, I believe, his own piece of land to show the locaLS HOW YOU do it for the first time. Somewhere in the middle of it his tractor and plow (?) are one place laying on it's side and he is a long way off laying on the ground in another place. Tomasito was cleaqring some brush on a plot next to my farmm in Mexico and bulldozed a sleeping drunkard into another life. I hit a stump buried in a levee during a demo job near the Cambodian border in 6th gear on the 6610 and went stone dead stopped at near midnight and don't even have a clue how I remained on the rig. I have had D6 Cat Dozers buried in mud almost up to the cyclinder heads miles from nowhere in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. If your guys is using a "three" plow (sic) and pulling up roots I'd be mighty scared if i WAS OPERATING THERE. I think a Cat track layer with one or two huge rippers would be the first move on the land before putting any smaller stuff on it but obviously that's not the Thai way. My b-i-l brought me out to show me one of his first jobs after i got the old man the "new" ways that could be done when I BOUGHT THE fORD 6610. When i asked him the price he was going to charge i had to inform him at 300 baht an hour (supposedly the going rate) he wasn't going to even pay for fuel dam_n near. when i went out and saw the 10 rai in about 15 differnet plots with about 10-20 dead trees some cut down some to be cut down and the other 10-20 alive I had to explain that there was no price he could charge them to get the place ready for rice because he couldn't do the work and he would destroy the rig with all the hidden unknowns.

I got 1 1/2 inch diameter linked ship anchor chain and railroad tracks out of my farm in monterey california and the guuy that got stuck one year in the 10 wheeler bringing in the last load of refuse mushroom cuttings with his ten wheeler in early fall left an unseen hole that when i hit it the next spring with my rotary mower behind my 60 horse Ford it was Boom Shakka Lahkka Baby as it broke the entire rear lift arms completely off inside the differential of my bad baby. the repair for that don't even come close to being covered by your 55k baht deal to do your 72 rai. So I say go man go if he will wade into your root strewn mystery rais at a set price go for it and after it is all done and somebody has ahauled away or burned all your roots and there are big stakes whereever the mystery buried root stumps are from the Khmer era are you will then be able to feel good to put someone on the land at a certain price per hour then. To do our small farm when we first bought it leveees and all it would take my b-i-l more than a day to do the entire job and it was rough on the tractor. The "new" way now allows me to blow through the dam_n thing in a few hours and hardly touch the clutch. techniique, equipment and design are all factors that will afffect the job the cost and the performance and finished job. good luck and "roots rock and reggae" but that was said by another great singer. Fords Boom Baby Fords

diversify and take a look at the organic side to see what afew small project failures and successes were like at that end. You definitely need some kind of "niche" as Issan Aussie says to make it nowdays. If you don't seell at your front door today then i think your chances ofr success are going to be much much more difficult. Mnay rubber farmers were crying a few years back and definitely wanting tp and cutting down their trees because they weren't gettting the money they needed. about 4 years ago the mangosteen cropp was so so good that the growers could not afford to pay their good labor to go in and pick because the crop was so good that the price was too low to be able to pay the labor. diversify diversify find some niches and light the josh sticks that you can find good labor because without a few good guys on your side working for and with you it will always be a dream. In business I always found it was very simple to be successful in a one man operation. The one man fam operation makes folk very old and generally very poor at the same time. Diversify but before ever spending a penny just get two or three laborers and pay them a great wage and benefits and see if you can keep three guys coming to work 5 days a week yeah it's supposed to be five but what da hay just try it. Pour some concrete sharpen some tools get a few buckets of greaswe and some minor pieces of equipment organize and play around and if they show up and work well for you then all the things that youy will learn about economics and chemisrty and agriculture and mechanics and hydruaulics and vet issues will be of great vallue when you start o look for a future siteo r sites to keeep these three guys still working for you happy as bugs in rugs. if you find that maybe it isn't too easy to deal with good permaneth labor then all the money that you have spent is more than like gold in the bank since you will have the 100+ million baht still in the bank that it nwould take to be able to create a viable scenario to the one you are proposing.

Has anyone out their been able to have actual cash in the pocket profits of 50 million baht for the last 12 years of their farm operations??

We will wait to see if we get any replies to the last question but again there is a chance, I believe that someone with a decent amount of money for start up may be able to find a niche and with a very very diversified operation and hoperffully a 'front door on site" abiltity to market some things will be able to make a living at farming again. Organic is the way that I intend to attempt it. Chike Dee and when you finally make the plunge if you end up with no more than an old Ford tractor to show for it all you're all right in my book old fords and old farmers forever

1800 rai of Eucalyptus would do it If you buy good land.....

that would rape the land and no profit would justify it

Interesting, learned my new topic of the day.

It is listed with a good photo as Solanum mammosum => Cow Udder Plant

http://www.rjhorton....er%20plant.html

I also did not know that

Tomato S. lycopersicum

Potato S. tuberosum

Eggplant S. melongena

are all of the Nightshade family

This means that they may cause pigs trouble.

All Solanum are to some degree toxic,

but they are toxic to humans in the same way as to pigs,

so apply caution as you eat happily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum

to the lip of the water, well done I knew about the tomato potato toxicity and that dealt mostly with the green plant material (sort of that thing about don't eat the little white sprouts on an older potato but definitely the green plant matter is a no no for soup. Unless maybe soup for the chickens that have been gorging on Issan Aussie's worm composters. Amazing that something so good for you *(tomatoes multiply processed tomatoes like paste even better) as a fruit can harm you so much as the plant. fords forever