Preparing salt to select rice seed for planting.
I got my start in farming early, learning mostly from my father. He left Yunnan in China in the 1950s, after the civil war. I was born in a Chinese village in the mountains of northern Thailand. My family grew potatoes and corn for market, and a lot of other things to eat at home. My father and brothers raised horses as pack animals. As a teenager, I moved to Taipei, Taiwan to study, and I lived there for 20 years. I was in business, and about as far from farming as you can get.
I never thought I’d be doing farming, even after I married this crazy American. For my work, I help organize things: conferences, workshops, research projects, study tours, things like that. I’m fluent in Thai, Chinese and English, so I can help put things together for people. In general, I like to help people when they have problems. Chiang Mai has a lot of great things, but people don’t know how to use them: Eastern medicine, health food, organic markets, great restaurants, etc. I help people find stuff. The farm is another opportunity to help people find stuff.
I like to cook, too, and I like to know my daughter and friends have safe and healthy food to eat. Nowadays, you don’t really know what you’re going to get at the market. My husband grows food on our farm. (Actually, I’m better at farming than him, but I let him do all the hard work.) I know our food is safe, and it tastes better than food from the market. So Jeff grows it, and I cook it or prepare something: soymilk, corn pancakes, duck-egg omelets, pesto, longan tea, cassava cobbler. Whatever. We have a lot of friends and they love to eat it. That makes me happy.
We also have a lot of friends that grow natural food, but they don’t know how to connect with markets. There are markets for things that people grow with chemicals like corn or peanuts or mangoes, but the prices are terrible. I studied marketing at university and worked in marketing in Taiwan for many years. And I’ve done research and development work with indigenous people in the Mekong Region. So we think we can help them find markets that are appropriate for them.
It’s pretty simple. Our friends in the city want safe and healthy food. They like to try new things. But they don’t always know what to get and where to get it. And we have friends that grow good food, but they don’t know who to sell it to. It just makes sense that we use Fair Earth Farm to bring them together.
