Hello again from the soap making, garden raking, “from scratch” baking Sabai group! We’ve just arrived back in Chiang Mai after an incredibly fun, eye opening, and beautiful week in “Pun Pun”. “Pun Pun” translates to “Thousand Varieties” and is a community centered around self-reliance and improving personal and global health, the economic struggles of current Thai farmers, and the environmental implications of sustaining our planet (with a focus on seed saving).
I’ll be honest here; for me, reading “learning sustainable living, organic farming, and seed saving” in our itinerary conjured up images of shoveling soil for 8 hours a day, eating straight kale and pooping in a hole. Boy was I wrong. Pun Pun fed our stomachs (a little bit too well… have you heard of the “SEAsia 15”?), our minds, challenged our conventional thinking about agriculture, medicine, and life, and even had a few western toilets (for those fast enough in the morning). The 10 acre farm was created about 20 years ago and houses about 20 full time community members (including families and children), volunteers, and workshops for people to learn and live the sustainable lifestyle. Each day we learned a new trade, so I’ll give you a quick low-down on some of the highlights.
Soap and Kombucha making- Get ready parents, your kids are now culinary geniuses. With astonishingly few natural, homegrown ingredients (aka flowers, roots, plants, dirt), we were able to make our own bar soap that can be used for body, face, hair, teeth, and could probably get a high school diploma. For those who don’t dabble in “super food, Trader Joes” lifestyle, Kombucha is a fermented tea drink that has many health benefits but also costs an arm in a leg. However, we got to learn to make it ourselves, and despite personally finding the vinegar taste a bit *interesting* to say the least, I have a feeling many parents will be hearing (and tasting) more about Kombucha once we get back.
Thai Massage and Cooking: The Carpe kids are well on our way to becoming professional chefs and thai massage experts. We all got to learn some skills in the kitchen, including rolling extra fat sushi rolls, crying relentlessly with the onion blues, picking herbs straight from the garden, and helping to create the mouthwatering, nutrient filled meals we ate everyday. The last morning we also got up close and personal testing each others’ flexibility and tickle resilience as we learned the art of Thai massage. Lets just say we all have much more respect for massage therapists (and are
Gardening, Seed Saving, Composting, etc: Don’t worry, we did get down and dirty too. From the barefoot, big-smiled villagers we learned the tricks and trades of *not* killing plants, harvesting their seeds, using our leftovers and dead plants to fertilize the soil, and eating an excessive amount of passion fruit and bananas (my record was 27 in one day) as we worked. It is such an empowering feeling to grow your own food rather than relying on large scale agriculture businesses who often use tactics like “hybrid seed distributing”, land-burning, and farming with chemicals and pesticides which hurt both the environment and small scale farmers. Every dollar we spend is a “vote” of sorts, and learning the values of organic, natural farming has opened our eyes to the need to be conscientious consumers.
Natural Dyeing and Healing: Again, plants to the rescue to keep us healthy, happy, and stylish. We got to bring out our creative (or lack there of *cough cough* myself) side with a “Tye Dye” activity. Using the vibrant yellow and purple colors from plants, we made cotton towels/scarves/DeVince master pieces and, hooked to the process, sacrificed some of our white clothing (sorry Mom). Another day, P’Joe (the founder of Pun Pun) gave us a talk about natural healing and his tips and tricks for a healthy life. Methods ranged from drinking 5 cups of water each morning, using clay mud masks for healthy skin, relaxing and listening to one’s body, heat, and the many, many benefits of… urine face masks, drinking urine, and coffee and lime enemas (oh boy). Alright, I’ll let you in on a little secret. 3 Carpe students may or may not have tried for themselves the pee-drinking Thai ritual for improved health. Parents, it’s up to you to see how well you know your kids and play a classic game of “who done it”.
Fun, Leisure, and a taste home: When we weren’t learning new skills, Pun Pun was a great place to reconnect and enjoy. Whether that was going on walks/runs through the miles (*cough* kilometers) of fields and nature, playing some intense card games, board games, and blind dodge ball, reading, talking, and journaling on the iconic “third floor” of the community hall, and watching incredible documentaries about Pun Pun, seed saving, and living in the moment. It was a great place to grow as individuals and as a group. As much as we love rice, we enjoyed the “Pizza Party” where we made everything from scratched and then ate an embarrassing amount of this “homeland goodie”. Sneaky secret: our group got a fill of something we’ve been searching for this whole trip… good ole Harry Potter. Huddled around in the “cool” Thai weather (what an oxymoron), an evening Harry Potter movie made Pun Pun feel just a little more “homey”, and we loved every second of it.
Amazingly, this is only some of the amazing things we did this week (get ready for Emma’s post coming soon spotlighting some Muddy fun we had).
Overall, this week has opened our eyes not only to the world agriculture industry but also to the alternatives to traditional thinking with food, medicine, and livelihood. We began a toolkit of self-reliance and feel empowered to take a personal involvement in our own lives and with the food and products we use everyday. Moral of the story: when we get home, expect your grocery bills to go down and compost piles to go up. Onwards!
With love,
Ellen and Emma
