Down On The "farm" Today

[loong]

Thanks Jandtaa,

I will look for the thread re Boric acid, I'm pretty sure that you mentioned Borax before, and I was just met with "No Have" or blank looks when I tried to find it . I would like to get rid of the ants, especially the ones that steal my seed! I couldn't believe it the first time I saw them do that. Sow the seed one day and the next, the ants have taken them.

Still a lot of hard work ahead of me, especially if I am going to get the new plot into shape.

Somehow, the work seems less exhausting when you start to see results. Hopefully the frustrations of the "rainy season" are behind me now and I can enjoy the next few months before the April heat returns.

It's so cold first thing in the mornings now. A few cups of coffee to get me going and I'm eager to be off to the garden and do a bit of work at first light. Apart from anything else, it warms me up.

It does make me laugh - on the way I pass some locals all huddled round a fire, trying to get warm. Later in the full heat of the day I see some of the same people working in their plots, complaining about the heat! I just think "Why don't they do the work first thing when it is cold? - they could be relaxing now instead" And they think that I'm crazy!!

It will soon be light and so I will be off for a few hours work/enjoyment

Bye all

[rice555]

Hello loong, if you go to the masa thread, the info I gave where to get 'lime' in BKK,

they have both, borax B.P. 1973, 450grm box is not cheap, Bt.320. The also have boric acid in 2 grades. The 500grms of H3BO3 61.83% is around Bt.1,300, from OZ, they also have a 450-500(?) box of a lesser grade but I don't know the price.

They had both the borax and the boric acid on the shelf here in Korat at the chem store I buy things at. if they don't have it I/S, they will order.

I got the ants in control here, it's just the cobra sunning it's self on the lawn, now he's in the ancho's I have to water 3 times a day.

rice555

[jandtaa]

Hi Loong

Here's the relevant thread from Drtreelove link

I got my Boric Acid from an old fashioned type pharmacy in Chiang Rai 20 baht per 100 gramme. If you still can't find any Pm me and I'll pop some in the post for you.

cheers for now J

[pigeonjake]

hi guys, yes i remember out of town with jack hargreavs, im 49 and we got it in lincolnshire, god i could go on about some poaching storys,lol,my old grandad was one of the best in our area, going back to jack hargreavs, can you remember he used to end the show with some sort of implenent and say do you know what this is for, my dad used to know quite a few of them but would never tell me, i allways had to wait for next week, i used to love the program, mind you i had an alotment at 12 of my own, god was i proud of that, it was grass when i got it, and did i get some bliters working on it, but i made a few bob selling stuff of it when i got it going,i can remember people saying to my dad, if only all kids were like your ron ken things would be better, and i dont think ive turned out a bad un, my old grandad used to sat though, hard work never hurt anyone, but it kills horses, and buggers tractors,lol, take care all and haapy christmass and new year to all, and may all your wishes come true, mine are, with one beautiful daughter and another on the way due march, ron

[jandtaa]

Hi Folks

Well it's been a while but here's an update. Progress has been fairly slow on the plot recently but my New Years resolution is to try and get more organised and concentrate on just a couple of areas rather than trying to do everything at once. The original pile of compost finished a couple of weeks ago and I have been applying it to the young fruit trees. I have quite a collection of further piles in various states of decomposition and have another 30 sacks of manure and a mountain of rice straw so I will build another couple of windrows using the same quick method. Hopefully I can bag up a large amount of finished compost and store it for use next year to give myself a head start.

The young fruit trees appear to be settling in nicely, I'm now down to deep watering once a week so this frees up some time, and they are just starting a flush of new growth. Now I have plenty of compost I'm digging new planting holes for the 20 odd containerised specimens I have awaiting planting. I've also been making "Bokashi" with my kitchen scraps so will experiment with adding a bucketful to some of the planting holes.

I now have the following species :

Mango, Longan, Rambutan, Marian Plum, Kaffir Lime, Lime, Tangerine, Jack fruit, Pomegranate, Tamarind, Pomelo, Asian Pear as well as Coconut, Banana, Cha Om and Sadao.

I've also started sheet mulching the "forest garden" area using cardboard, rice straw and compost so hopefully this will keep the weeds down and save time next year so I can concentrate more on the growing side of things. 

Cheers for now J 

[soidog2]

Rather than writing a long winded story I find it easier to post a couple of pictures.

Today I started to prepare the tomato beds in the back yard.

The seedlings all look the same , actually there are about ten kinds of interesting heirlooms & cherry tomatoes I am looking forward to.

Enjoy

[soidog2]

I guess, nobody is asking, how are the habaneros are doing this year; I will have to volunteer.

They are doing fine!

Enjoy

[Foreverford]

Rather than writing a long winded story I find it easier to post a couple of pictures.

Today I started to prepare the tomato beds in the back yard.

The seedlings all look the same , actually there are about ten kinds of interesting heirlooms & cherry tomatoes I am looking forward to.

Enjoy

Hi Soidog I believe from my fading memory you gave away a few seedlings last year and you were near Buriram. I would like to buy a few tomatoes (or trade some produce) possibly later on for seeds but will PM you if I get the time to try ( oh so many projects).

Well I used this reply to post an update on what's happening and have manage to keep the Ford doing amazing things with a few custom tools I've built and believe it or not I was able, in one day, to bring and dump and spread and compact 126 trucks of dirt to repair and upgrade the roads to and around the farm that was all in 8 hours and all with just one person and tractor. Yeah pretty impossible to believe but unfortunately I'm still feeling the pain of non-stop tractor work, almost flipped it twice but road out one into and out of the new lake I built then had to be pulled out of going 50 feet into the klong later in the day when I started to fatigue. I got it airborne once but that was just due to being pissed off from getting bad placement of my loads. I've been working towards getting the 14 rai plot nearly level and buildfing a complete road system around it (managing to do four things at once, building roads and creating levees with the dirt from digging a pond and klong ) along with a klong that will drain it into the pond that a I have built. Pond will have both the frogs and catfish and the road will also be at a height that will allow the growing of fruit trees out of the flood plain. Just disced into the ground the first crop of Pah Tueng (sun hemp) for green manure but it wasn't 50% of the plot due to lack of seeds but managed to buy 2 tons and got the entire plot planted last week and then unbelieveably it rained for a few days. The place looks like an emerald in the middle of all the other stubblefields that will eventually be burnt off. So now all the rice stubble has been cut and semi incorporated and a new crop of cover is in and will be turned in well before planting season and will probably go for a third planting before finally getting in the rice for this year. Building and making a functioning bio-char system (modifying jandtaa's info and drawings from the Philipines for rice husks) for the rice straw is the next high priority item and then i will attempt to mix all I can make with the 15 tons of chicken manure I was able to acquire and get it spread on this and the other farms that we are convertting to organic. Been pretty busy so not much time to write but things are moving forward and hoping to get 10 tons this year on much less land than we had this last year when we got 9 tons (it is unbelieveably delicious and fragrant). regardless how much we get, the land is and will continue to be much much more fertile than the dying mess we started with. Choke Dee

[soidog2]

Planting tomatoes; illustrated!

This link will show you the seedlings at about two weeks. :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/post-a103479-.html

#1, The same seedlings today, before I planted them.

# 2, Prepared the sunscreen ( better fruit set and protection from the midday sun )

# 3, Prepared the spacing, a little tighter than recommended. I do it like that because some will not make it.

# 4 Planted & watered.

[loong]

Hello all,

it's been a bit quiet on this thread lately - I guess that everyone has been too busy

I had built a compost heap near the river as all the necessary ingredients were freely available nearby- cow dung, fallen leaves, greenery, water plants and water etc. The idea was to move the finished product to plot 2 when it was completed, less volume and lighter.

Unfortunately, there has been work going on as the river is dammed and used as a reservoir. So they been widening, dredging and building a road alongside.

This meant that I had to move my heap to the plot by handcart before it disappeared under tons of soil. A lot of work, but the bonus is that moving it has done a great job of mixing and aerating it

The really sad thing is that some villagers had "commandeered" and made plots alongside the river and now all their work has been buried

What is it with this obsession that Thais have for building up their land for no good reason?

Big truckloads of soil have been available fore 250 Baht, and people have been going crazy building up the levels of their land. Some of them now have the floor level inside the house lower than the land level !!??

As the soil quality of plot 2 is pretty poor and very stony, I ordered 1 truckload to mix with my compost. The locals all wanted to know why I only wanted 1 and the bloke in charge "why You don't take 10?" I explained that I really wanted DIn Dum - black soil, not the clay, silt and some sandy soil that they were selling.

I wasn't at the plot when they delivered and my Father-in-law helpfully changed the order to 6 truckloads. When I returned, they had already delivered 4 loads. I was absolutely livid.

Also I had recently cleaned up the concrete base of the original house that used to be on the land as I was going to build a hut etc. The truck had run across and broken all the concrete.

FIL couldn't understand the problem and got it into his head that I was annoyed at the cost, he couldn't get his head around the fact that I just didn't want this type of soil! If it had been Din Dum, then I would have ordered 6 loads!

He then arranged for a group of people to come and spread the "soil". I said no as while it was in piles it retained moisture and that i would spread and mix it with compost myself. I know that no matter how carefully I explain what I want, they will do want they think that I should want.

I have tried to express my concerns to some of the people who have bult up their land, advising them that they should plant grass, weeds or anything to get some roots into the soil. After all, most of this soil was carried into the river by the rain and I'm sure that it will try to get back there in the rainy season. Most of it is the very fine stuff that sets like concrete when it is dry but if you turn a hose on it with a light sprinkle, once wet, the soil runs off. I actually managed to cut my hand picking up a dry chunk of it. How many of you have managed to cut yourself with soil?

So I've been very busy trying to get this sorted, planting sweet potatoes and beans as I go. It's good that I had a large quantity of compost.

We had a fair amount of rainfall last week and I could hardly stay on my feet, sinking and slipping in the slurry. The roads were covered in a layer of the stuff that had run off of people's land. Looked a right mess!

I've planted sweet potato cuttings because they make roots and grow rapidly so can dig the stems and leaves in, as well as the bean plants to improve the soil. Mind you - I will probably have my work cut out getting rid of the sweet potato plants when I no longer need them

The one good thing about all this is that this soil is obviously absolutely jam packed full of nutrients. There is small area that I mixed compost and charcoal into and planted leafy green veg. They have grown sturdily and very quickly

Still a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm sure that it will all be worth it in the end.

Edited February 25, 2010 by loong

[soidog2]

Planting tomatoes; illustrated!

This link will show you the seedlings at about two weeks. :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/post-a103479-.html

#1, The same seedlings today, before I planted them.

# 2, Prepared the sunscreen ( better fruit set and protection from the midday sun )

# 3, Prepared the spacing, a little tighter than recommended. I do it like that because some will not make it.

# 4 Planted & watered.

Growing update, a month later, almost all the plants already flowered!

I pulled a couple that showed early signs of disease .

[NADTATIDA1]

Hi to you all partisapating in this thred,would just like to say thanks for the input and i hope it keeps on going...one of my favourite reads on here.

thanks again,i have learnt so much here cheers!

[soidog2]

So far it’s been a truly rough year for the garden.

“El Niño” is bringing 100+ F% temperatures every day; no rain predicted for quite a while !

Here’s a quick unedited Iphone ( not too sharp ) collection of today’s garden offerings !

Enjoy!

[loong]

Nice photos Soidog,

I've been busy lately, been difficult to get any work done in the garden, other than keep pace.

I had a fair amount of compost under the canopy of the bamboo clump and it is now just a mat of Bamboo roots. Silly me

The heat started early this year and I'm praying that we get some rain soon. I'm going to adapt Jantdaas idea of using coke bottles to get the water down to the root area as I have to water sparingly now. Not having an independant water supply, I have to use the public water and this is very erratic now.

Anybody know a rain dance? If so please get on with it and shake your stuff

[soidog2]

Planting tomatoes; illustrated!

This link will show you the seedlings at about two weeks. :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/post-a103479-.html

#1, The same seedlings today, before I planted them.

# 2, Prepared the sunscreen ( better fruit set and protection from the midday sun )

# 3, Prepared the spacing, a little tighter than recommended. I do it like that because some will not make it.

# 4 Planted & watered.

Growing update, a month later, almost all the plants already flowered!

I pulled a couple that showed early signs of disease .

Final update. About 3.5 month from planting to picking

Typical heirloom tomato shape, now easily recognizable.

Considering the extreme weather we had this year, it’s a miracle !

Enjoy !

[Foreverford]

Planting tomatoes; illustrated!

This link will show you the seedlings at about two weeks. :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/post-a103479-.html

#1, The same seedlings today, before I planted them.

# 2, Prepared the sunscreen ( better fruit set and protection from the midday sun )

# 3, Prepared the spacing, a little tighter than recommended. I do it like that because some will not make it.

# 4 Planted & watered.

Growing update, a month later, almost all the plants already flowered!

I pulled a couple that showed early signs of disease .

Final update. About 3.5 month from planting to picking

Typical heirloom tomato shape, now easily recognizable.

Considering the extreme weather we had this year, it's a miracle !

Enjoy !

Super-star that's who you are. You know you are the envy of us all!!! real tomatoes. They are next on my list but still way too too much to do. No time for computers but lot's going on. Didn't get a chance to actually read everything here but Jandtaa asked about rice husks and they have an enormously humongously big like power plant that has been built next to Prachon Chai in Buri Ram that they make electricioty out of the husks so there are none to be had anymore as 18 wheelers by the hundreds roll in frequently. I have failed a few times in trying to make bio-char out of the rice straw, a real bummer, as i resorted to buying it from the sugar cane growers by the ten wheel truck loads but can't put it in the farm as it would blow my organic back to day one so I am resigned using it in a mix with Chicken manure (sold as organic, all you can buy, bagged in pellets or by bulk on 18 wheelers, near Buri Ram/Korat border) and earth to use for newly planted trees around the perimeter of the main farm that won't be producing for the next three years. It may be a bit of an around the corner move but by law it is all I can do now as anyone could question the bio-char source as being non-organic and I doubt there is an organic sugar cane farm in Thailand that sells bio-char. Though we do know that the snow on the arctic circle has DDT in it but that is another story. So sourcing of quantities is still moving forward but the chicken manure source is a fantastic one and I brought in truck loads. I've got lots of new stuff happening but no time to put it in words as I promised earlier (was it really months ago???). I'll figure out the bio-char with the rice straw and we'll all be heroes, I working on your Phillipine version Jandtaa but definitely a bit modified for straw. got to go to much to do the Ford just broke a hydraulic cylinder so it's mechanicing time but it has been unbelieveable, on one stretch for 15 days I averaged over a dozen hours a day basically non-stop and it just screamed like an eagle and never even hiccupped. peace and love Fords Forever

[Foreverford]

Rather than writing a long winded story I find it easier to post a couple of pictures.

Today I started to prepare the tomato beds in the back yard.

The seedlings all look the same , actually there are about ten kinds of interesting heirlooms & cherry tomatoes I am looking forward to.

Enjoy

Hi Soidog I believe from my fading memory you gave away a few seedlings last year and you were near Buriram. I would like to buy a few tomatoes (or trade some produce) possibly later on for seeds but will PM you if I get the time to try ( oh so many projects).

Well I used this reply to post an update on what's happening and have manage to keep the Ford doing amazing things with a few custom tools I've built and believe it or not I was able, in one day, to bring and dump and spread and compact 126 trucks of dirt to repair and upgrade the roads to and around the farm that was all in 8 hours and all with just one person and tractor. Yeah pretty impossible to believe but unfortunately I'm still feeling the pain of non-stop tractor work, almost flipped it twice but road out one into and out of the new lake I built then had to be pulled out of going 50 feet into the klong later in the day when I started to fatigue. I got it airborne once but that was just due to being pissed off from getting bad placement of my loads. I've been working towards getting the 14 rai plot nearly level and buildfing a complete road system around it (managing to do four things at once, building roads and creating levees with the dirt from digging a pond and klong ) along with a klong that will drain it into the pond that a I have built. Pond will have both the frogs and catfish and the road will also be at a height that will allow the growing of fruit trees out of the flood plain. Just disced into the ground the first crop of Pah Tueng (sun hemp) for green manure but it wasn't 50% of the plot due to lack of seeds but managed to buy 2 tons and got the entire plot planted last week and then unbelieveably it rained for a few days. The place looks like an emerald in the middle of all the other stubblefields that will eventually be burnt off. So now all the rice stubble has been cut and semi incorporated and a new crop of cover is in and will be turned in well before planting season and will probably go for a third planting before finally getting in the rice for this year. Building and making a functioning bio-char system (modifying jandtaa's info and drawings from the Philipines for rice husks) for the rice straw is the next high priority item and then i will attempt to mix all I can make with the 15 tons of chicken manure I was able to acquire and get it spread on this and the other farms that we are convertting to organic. Been pretty busy so not much time to write but things are moving forward and hoping to get 10 tons this year on much less land than we had this last year when we got 9 tons (it is unbelieveably delicious and fragrant). regardless how much we get, the land is and will continue to be much much more fertile than the dying mess we started with. Choke Dee

Off the farm in Hua Hin and the wife is very ill. We got some rain for two days but i was in Hua Hin for a cricket competition and the body finally pulled the plug and all the old maladies (basic old age and bad ears) put the whoop on me and I couldn't make the 7 hour sprint to the tractor and lost a real good opportunity to finish (well semi-sort-a) off my road and levee system. The entire 14 rai was planted with the Pah teung beans (sun hemp)and half we planted scientifically (I had my brother-in-law alone and a hand held over the shoulder broadcast seeder) and broadcast in two directions to prevent any missed areas and then the troops arrived and started flinging and winging the other half. Amazingly (??!#??) the "scientific" area popped up perfectly and was extremely lush. the other was okay some places and not so in others as you would expect. So now it gets really too cool and you have the place where we had originally "scientifically" planted one smaller area of our original plantings with the limited seed we had while waiting for the two ton shipment. I had staked it off in a square to represent a rai and then had the wife and sister-in -law plant it and it came out lush and full in the cut down stubble. Well before we planted this entire 14 I disced in all of the first crop of beans and the stubble. The place now really really looked like an emerald as we were irrigating the place now as there hasn't been even a hope for rain in a while, all of a sudden in a week or so the area where the first "scientific" square patch was planted goes wild and it is nearly twice as high as the bordering areas and very very almost military green in the darkness of leaf color just incredible as the locals and family are thinking that maybe i have some idea about what i am taklking about and there is some excitement in the anticipation of what the hel_l the rice is going to look like. Last year it started to take on the proportions of corn and was so seed heavy that the nearly half dozen typhoons that hit us after the phillipines knocked it all over. I am definitely going to over-seed and hope that might help in suppo0rt (again disease and iother things can be a oproblem then) so will plant sections slightly different to see what does best this year.

So I started getting into heavier clay as i was digging the pond and canals and roads and levees and started to do the math and realized the time had come to get a bigger piece of equipment. It cost me 20,000 baht to bring in the biggest brandy-new excavator I've worked with, computer and all. I know i couldn't have done the work that it accomplished with the Ford for 20,000 in diesel fuel alone. It came in a transport right to the farm so the old levee road that you used to be asble to bring only a motorcycle in on has improved slightly with the Ford really showing its worth. I had been working since before sunrise and they showed up with excavator at about 2pm and by the time they figured and tried to refigure my estimates (their's too) we agreed on a price and got down to it. I quit when it got dark but by then had managed to spread enough goo on the roads to bring them way up and start to dry out the goo so it could be worked. Final story on the excavator is I now have a pond that is the equivalent of 30x15x5 meters deep in a kidney bean sort of design and a klong that goes down the two long sides and the back of the semi-rectangular plot. It is two meters wide by two meters deep. It's dug straight and their will be definite sluffing of the inner side but let it be. So now the new small road/levee goes completely around the farm with the new small klong seperating it from the bottom land. the klong can facilitate moving water onto and off of the bottom land through the pond and pump systems. Oh yeah how many tilapia and catfish it will produce will be fun to see. The "small road levee" is really not going to be a road (my wife loves to drive her bike on it) as the partial purpose to building such a big and wide levee was to create space above flood levels for the avocado and limes and pomegranite and mangoes and coconuts that will be the main trees to be grown on it but if wife has her way she wants to plant one of everything there and so be it go baby go.

I had to return to the US for a death in the family and basically missed the optimum time to incorporate the beans in for green manure and at this point their is nobody else able to operate the tractor as one brother bailed out so he could drink more whiskey and again I say go baby go and don't come back jack. When i got back i went straight to the farm and it was over a hundred degrees everyday and no wind to speak of and really was a blessing in some ways as i had to disc the beans in and if their was a lot of wind I would have lost a lot of tops soil as it was I would make a run and turn around and therir was the dust just hanging in the air to make ano9ther pass through it. Man with three air filters i was dumping pounds of dust out of the first couple but still the tractor never died. We are having three phase electricity brought to farm with something like 20 some poles so when it finally gets there (about 11 in so far) we will be able to do some significant testing of the five inch well that we put in and determine what size pump we will fit it with but our two inch exploratory well was almost artesian at times so it looks pretty good. It is bone dry all the klongs are looking like the sahara desert (still have a bit of water in the bottom of the new pond from when it was dug) and it keeps geting hotter. I was still working levees (dam-n near finished) after sunset and found my cowboy boots and overalls were soaked in hydraulic fluid so figured since it was dark and my fuse blew and the lights weren't coming on that i might as well call it a day a week and a end of a season and put the tractor away and head back to the condo in Hua Hin and get ready for a little international cricket competition. the old Ford limped to the barn with me sore everywhere and I decide to m09ve a couple pieces of equipment so I could get them welded up and dam_n if when i was bringing the last piece over to the uncle's place and 10 yards from it and i turn left it goes straight so i turn right and it goes right try left and straight again. Yeah the end of the hydraulic cylinder had come loose and after some fiddling and fooling got it back together and limped it back to pasture. I'm going wityh a new cylinder and then i'll rebuild the old for spare parts. Amazingly we ended up winning the Sixes and a great time was had by all with the gracious hosting of the Dusit Hotel. But nine games in four days along with sleep depravation and copious imbibements of cricket lubricant (this is sixes folks so tea isn't the norm at 95 degrees on the ocean) and I am still feeling the effects. I'll take the trophy and strap it on to the hood of the trator like Marlon Brando in Hollister and call myself the "Wild Bunch". As i write the news calls for some good rain so we wait in anticipation (for my new cyclinder and the rain). The previous forecasts talk of no significant rain until June. I plan on being in the Sierra Nevadas of California at 10,000 feet near Mono lake for the first day of summer and then off to Alaska to fill the freezer with halibut and salmon so if no rain by the end of May i will use an old trick that has never failed to make it rain but until then i guess I'll say mai pen rai or as we say in Mexico when it didn't rain for nearly 5 years in our village and my farm in the Baja desert, manana (tomorrow). Choke Dee Fords Forever

[soidog2]

[quote name=Foreverford' post='3295416' date='2010-01-26 15:11:10'

The previous forecasts talk of no significant rain until June. I plan on being in the Sierra Nevadas of California at 10,000 feet near Mono lake for the first day of summer and then off to Alaska to fill the freezer with halibut and salmon so if no rain by the end of May i will use an old trick that has never failed to make it rain but until then i guess I'll say mai pen rai or as we say in Mexico when it didn't rain for nearly 5 years in our village and my farm in the Baja desert, manana (tomorrow). Choke Dee Fords Forever

This week we had some good rain; people are planting things.

Foreverford , you are the real star and most enthusiastic member of this board.

The ripe tomatoes picture is for you, In the US it will set you back around $ 4.00 a pound or so.

I did fish for salmon around Juno and its certainly nice, you enjoy.

Best

Edited April 25, 2010 by soidog2

[Foreverford]

This week we had some good rain; people are planting things.

Foreverford , you are the real star and most enthusiastic member of this board.

The ripe tomatoes picture is for you, In the US it will set you back around $ 4.00 a pound or so.

I did fish for salmon around Juno and its certainly nice, you enjoy.

Best[/color]

Too too good Soi Dog and i was just thinking of some great BL&T sandwiches boy would i love to get my knife in those beauties in the photo. Keep on keepin on super star!

Well as you say the rains came and so did I. We got word of the rains and with a remodel of the condo just starting I grabbed a brother-in-law and loaded up an old fridge and new hydraulic cylinder for the Ford and we put it on the road at 3am and headed for the land of rain. Out your way in looked good and wet but you always get more than we do in Lavia. Got the tractor tore apart and put back together by luch time and filled it full of diesel and headed out to the small farm to disc it for planting o0f rice shortly. Puff the magic dragon as they might say as the ground was still dust and just floated away with the wind so I was finished with all i could do in less than a minute and headed back to the family home. I was then advised that it had rained much harder over at the big farm about 5 kilometers away so I left the "18" disc (2 gang adjustable 3 point disc set up) on the Ford and put it in eighth gear and heade towards the Cambodian border as the skies were trying to drop some rain. The rain didn't come and but there was a bunch more moisture in the ground (still not enough to do all I need to do as far as levelling certain areas) and I was able to get the 19 rai ready for seeding (ideally I'll be able to level more before we plant) and the earth is just magnificent and soft and fluffy. I'm sure the pops-in-law is amazed because i told him the farms would never see a "3" or a "7" (they are basically Thai plows that they use unendingly here) again as we would only be using the disc to break the ground and work in the organic amendments that we are adding to the soil. He has to be very impressed because of the use o0f covwer crops and the tilling of them into the soil has made the fields basically weed free and in the past this farm was a big problem with weeds. We4 have a bunch of huge trees growing out in thuis farm and it is truly a beautiful place as it isn't just a big field of cropland. Under the trees the ground was very moist and fertile as is the way with nature. I finished with a glorious sunset and the day turning to night and knowing that the full moon was working its way through the clouds to greet me. I was able to buy some dried fish from a village a few kilometers from the big farm and put it in eighth gear again and hit the highway with all the lights blazing away. Got home and dumped the 18 and put on the box scraper and grabbed a few of the ripping teeth and turned it around filled it up to the top with diesel again and went back to fix the road to the big farm with enough moisture in it to start to make it take form and the next rains to come. Sure as your born and natural all again dang if i didn't find something new to do with that old sweetheart of a Ford tractor. the moon was full and getting high in the sky it had been a long ,long day that started over 700 kilometers away and i need to get done sometime and head back to Ratchaburi with the bro-in-law (since there wasn't enough rain to do all the work i needed to do on the farms and roads). So i looked at the old mule and decided to turn the ripping teeth around backwards and point the teeth forward and reverse the pins and sure as you're born I've got the box draging behind me picking up and laying down the spoils from the two right ripping teeth. I rolled back into the barn at just before 3am and the road was now crowned and wating for more rain but had finally taken on the shape of a properly graded road. It was a partial waer bog previoulsly and a roller coaster of ponds and bumps otherwise. Sleep felt good and i was up with the sun to look at the old mule's hooves and realized that the hundreds and hundreds of hours of work had proved that my design for the ripping teeth would last a life-time... but only if I ripped ion reverse as i had designed them. They were a bit mangled from ripping and grading with box at the same time yet they didn't fail me and i did finish what I needed to do but after i took a sledge hammer and a bit of hydraulic advantage to get them off the dozer blade the main weld on the dozer blade let loose (This is a Somboon Tractor part from out your way Soi Dog and the old man was a great tractor man but his son has taken over the business and they won't see me doing any more business with them due to things such as this blade and other things that were not professional on their part). So leaving for Hua Hin via Ratchaburi in a half hour and i get the blade to a relative to weld it back up together again and just another day "down on the farm" as we put it on the road and head south and wait again til we get any news of good rainfall so we can get the crop in the ground. In three weeks I will start o consider using my mojo to try create some rain in a way that has been unfallible before so I'll be in touch and about the only thing i don't think a Ford tractor can do is make it rain..... but then again maybe...........

[c64]

Hi.

I miss some posts here .

Did it die or something?

I really enjoy the guys posting here. Please keep up the good work

[Foreverford]

Hi.

I miss some posts here .

Did it die or something?

I really enjoy the guys posting here. Please keep up the good work

Great well I tried, I spent close to an hour typing up my final report for the year, pressed the reply button and got a thing saying they were shutting down the site at 6pm to make the mess they have made of it yesterday. It was 5:30 pm and there was no way to retrieve my script so it was all for nought and I hate to type and doubt I'll do it all over again so you probably won't hear from me for a few months here. It was shear stupidity that they did it that way but what else is new in this land of ineptitude, you bet your horse's a..s that I am p'd off big time. May all your fresh manure smell like the fools that did this without warning or recourse for the people on site without a sensible warning, what a complete joke.

[IsaanAussie]

s

Hi.

I miss some posts here .

Did it die or something?

I really enjoy the guys posting here. Please keep up the good work

Great well I tried, I spent close to an hour typing up my final report for the year, pressed the reply button and got a thing saying they were shutting down the site at 6pm to make the mess they have made of it yesterday. It was 5:30 pm and there was no way to retrieve my script so it was all for nought and I hate to type and doubt I'll do it all over again so you probably won't hear from me for a few months here. It was shear stupidity that they did it that way but what else is new in this land of ineptitude, you bet your horse's a..s that I am p'd off big time. May all your fresh manure smell like the fools that did this without warning or recourse for the people on site without a sensible warning, what a complete joke.

FEF,

How completely a-typical of you, sounds more like my reaction to wasted effort. Jai Yen Yen my friend. I too was surprised by the earlier than announced closure, but hey, Mai pen Rai TIT after all. There are no doubtedly more species of Pla in the pond and co-ordination isnt a Thai strength. When I looked this morning the old PMs were missing and I was pleasantly surprised by the almost immediate reaction by the support staff. Most things take a little longer here than where we all come from.

Give it another crack please, we all appreciate your input.

IA

Just take a deep breathe, and realise that just occessionaly we dont get our vinegar strokes aligned, after all isn't your motto FORD Fix or Repair Daily

Edited June 7, 2010 by IsaanAussie

[Lickey]

Testing testing,1 2 1 2 12 happened to me as well, had a lovely story but!!!!

[Lickey]

Ok, perhaps it will work this time??

We had quite a "dry" summer last year and the Tamarind came early, about 6 weeks early, the straight pod type were good, but not many people bought them, they lacked moisture i think was the problem, so we shelled and steamed them, they sold better but nothing like the previous year, then a month later the curly pods came on song, i would say nearly 95% had some kind of fungus/mold inside near the top, Must have taken about 210 kilos back to the farm and put on the compost heaps, I dont really understand why this all happened, the trees were full of pods, I think i posted some pics last year?

The mangoes were early as well, i think we had 3 of them, what happened is that the local temple [opposite the Salon] is building a new domitory, and the only labour BIL could find was 45ks away, he told them, its ok, you can live on the farm, we have 2 buildings there, electricity and borehole water, so about 30 people are living there now, but they have been there since Xmas, so thats where the mangoes went im sure, can even see a trail in the grass and bamboo poles under the trees, i think perhaps the mrs told them it was ok to take the mango but not banana or Kanoon, the next problem was, i usually run the pump at nights on a timer, so the water dont evaporate to quick, but the supply was getting intermitant, 3 mins sprinklers on, 5 mins off, so i stopped it altogether, just to make sure the labour had water, because they have kids and dogs ect living with them, so they got water and the bananas didnt,

Onto the Kanoon, for one week i told the mrs, will you please come and look, the fruit is starting to open/splitting, she says no its too early for this, but i dragged her to the farm and she says, why you not bring home? its ready!! cant you smell it? this particular fruit is 5 mtrs above me, how can i smell it?? she says, i will go get Mr Poo, he will take it down, this kanoon is huge, mrs cant find Poo, his mrs says he is in hospital again with kidney stones problem, Personally, i think he has made a bit of money, finished his rocket, and gone back to his own planet, I tell the mrs, im not going up there with all them weaver ants, so she nips back to the village and comes back with 2 teenagers, who willing climb and cut the huge kanoon, lower it to the ground and take it to the salon for 20bht each [in a trailer] the previous best was 19.5 ks, this one weighed in at 30ks, mrs sold it complete for 150bht, so we made 110 bht, [2.5 bottles of Leo] .....

As for doing the salad beds this year on the farm, what do you think? with 30 thais living there, so <deleted> to that this year!!

[IsaanAussie]

Well not wishing to suffer the time out issues or whatever of Foreverford and Lickey. I wrote mine contribution offline. Please find and get a laugh from the attachment.

Isaanaussie

Life in the village Jun8 2010.pdf

[aitch52]

Wot no bread? I'll have some toast then, you crack me up Issan Aussie, good dit which perfectly describes country life here.

[Foreverford]

Well not wishing to suffer the time out issues or whatever of Foreverford and Lickey. I wrote mine contribution offline. Please find and get a laugh from the attachment.

Isaanaussie

well well done put a big smile on my face

[c64]

Well not wishing to suffer the time out issues or whatever of Foreverford and Lickey. I wrote mine contribution offline. Please find and get a laugh from the attachment.

Isaanaussie

well well done put a big smile on my face

Thanks Ford, Lickey and others.

Thought just that everybody had lost their interest in this topic and didn't bother to reply in it :-)

Ahh.. Well, the maintenance people are there to mess up things anyhow

Regards

[IsaanAussie]

Well what can I offer today? How about the new blue water tower in the mobahn? How many of us have one of those that has never been started up? 1.5 Lan Baht just sitting there. Maybe I'll check the diary notes and write something soon as I remember there was a good story in that episode of 'On my wife's farm', in the meanwhile who else has one?

Isaanaussie

[David006]

Well not wishing to suffer the time out issues or whatever of Foreverford and Lickey. I wrote mine contribution offline. Please find and get a laugh from the attachment.

Isaanaussie

Bloody marvelous mate goodonya...can just picture it.....'stop little bit for me", "Go straight"...love it..same same here mate..made my day ..keep it up