A Month of Mud, Rain and Resilience: Setting Up A Farmstead in NE Thailand!

What’s Been Going On?

It’s been a crazy month on the farmstead in NE Thailand, with temperatures hitting mid 40oC, some Thai's were making jokes that they are no longer afraid of going to hell, as they are already experiencing the same temperatures right now in Thailand.

Setting up the farmstead for me continues to be a hella rollercoaster of a ride, and it challenges you with every decision you need to make and at every stage.

Its mentally and physically challenging and sometimes can be very hard hitting.

Why the term "a rollercoaster of a ride"? Let me explain.

The Big Energy And Motivation Drain

To start with - The temperatures have been brutal with temps of 41 degrees C being common place.

Our 800 tree hedgerow at times looked like thai fried basil, in other words burnt to a crisp – I was convinced that we were going to lose (at worst 50%) of the 150m tree line.

Water usage throughout this period has been pretty intense as you would expect. With our single borehole sometimes delivering water for 6 hours straight or more – it probably isn't a surprise to anyone to hear that despite the pump and solar running perfectly, late in the day - no water was arriving at the tank.

We had just basically hit the limit of what the poor system could deliver in one day. ?

This was a real low point for me. (Cue start of RollerCoaster Ride).

Without water the farm was literally a dead end. In these temperatures – plants would last at best a few days, maybe a week before turning into dried dead sticks.

And then a few days later the rain came in hard and heavy. It was a huge relief.

The Mayor and The Road

At this point the Mayor spoke to Art (my better half) and told her they were starting work on the road to the farmstead, upgrading it to double lane and hopefully adding a gravel surface.

This was amazing news as we had spoken to him earlier in the year and it seemed like the project was going to be shelved due to budget constraints.

Not only would this mean that we would have secure access into the farm during the rainy season – but having decent access like this would immediately add huge value to all of the local land area.

More to this lovely little side story in a bit!

Water Crisis Point

After much discussion with my local support crew: Sarah and Aom – it turned out Aom had engaged a drill team to drill a bore hole nearby locally.

I immediately took the decision to get the contractor in and look at the possibility of installing a second borehole at the farmstead.

Yes, it would be costly but until the rain season arrives in full force, we cannot rely on a single borehole only.

A few days later The Drill Team arrived and quickly identified a water source, miraculously within 5 metres of our workshop, (with its 12,000 litre storage tanks) and only 40 metres down. Unlike other drill teams I had seen in the past this team used ground radar to confirm the actual amount of water available.

With a bore hole so close to our new rainwater tanks, that could use our already installed solar, 10k litres and so close to the surface was beyond a miracle.

The feeling of relief at this stage was just incredible, and it was at this point I realized just how much worry and stress the I had been putting myself through, specifically around the lack of water. It felt like the weight of the whole of the nearby mountain had been taken off my shoulders.

I was overjoyed!

From The Highest High To The Lowest Low

To cut a very long story short, this is where the rollecoaster analogy comes in.

After the drill team had been drilling for 2 days, the 10k litres of water promised turned out to be a large clay slurry deposit and unusable.

After another day of investigating and statements like:

• ?“It should deliver 1000 litres an hour” and then
• “it should deliver 3000 litres a day” to
• “it should deliver 800 litres an hour”

….. quickly fell silent as the bore hole just could not deliver the quantity of water expected and the contractors gave up at this point.

To make matters worse, because of 2 days of incessant rainfall, when leaving the land the contractors quickly got bogged down in mud from the newly made road works and couldn’t get out.

I tried to go and assist in my 4x4 Isuzu V-Cross and immediately got stuck in less than 20ft. This was pretty serious mud. (Article Headline Photo also of the Isuzu).

Note: The macro (large back hoe) driver stopped working at this stage for 3 days as the mud was too deep.

Friendship and Community Support is Priceless!

A phone call to Aom and 20 mins later he arrived with his trusty Kubota 3608 4x4 tractor and was pulling all three vehicles out of the mud.

For so many times in the last 2 years that I have lost count and here we are yet again, I realized just how amazing Aom and Sarah (my local pals) were, in supporting me at every stage of this farmstead development.

They are my cheer team that just support me 100% of the time without question. I cannot thank these guys enough.

After Aom had towed out the contractors - I made a decision to stay on the farm as I was curious as to how this situation would pan out. This turned out to be a poor decision.

3 more days of intense rain later, and in the situation of it being almost impossible to get food and water into the farm, I donned my wellies and had to walk out. Leaving my trusty Isuzu parked up in the workshop.

At this stage Tractors were unable to get through the road and were having to pull out other tractors that were stuck fast.

So here we were at what appears to be a full on rainy season starting and I had no idea when I could get back to the farm, it could even be 3 months or more with no access if the rainy season is severe.....

To Be Continued.....

Rollercoaster Reflections for the Future.

?After going through such extremes in emotion from:

• Running out of water (Terrible)
• To having found a perfect solution for water (Fantastic)
• To, "oh sorry we made a mistake its mud" (More Terrible)
• To having a new road installed (More Fantastic!)
• That then turns into a mudbath. (MORE TERRIBLE!)

I did some serious self reflection and realised that there are some really good lessons to be learnt here.

My background is from both broadcasting and also the corporate engineering FM world where if there is a problem - it needs a solution faster than yesterday, and within budget constraints or preferably at zero cost.

The client doesn't want to be told there is a problem - there want to be told there was a problem, but you have already fixed it and have changed the process so that it never happens again and oh there is no cost to the solution.

As my old previous boss used to say - "you need to respond like your hair is on fire".

Whilst that was so very true for the corporate and client world - For my current situation, I need to unlearn this automatic response.

I have come to realise that I was trying to deliver tasks or projects with the same perfectionist approach to standards and performance that I had taken previously, and whilst this can be good from a standards perspective - it can also cause a huge amount of internal stress and unecessary mental pressure.

Specifically in rural Thailand, in these type of situations - it just won't work.

In this kind of environment (In my opinion!) you need to:

• Roll with the punches, if it goes wrong it goes wrong. Shrug it off because it will go wrong. This is not a negative attitude just an acceptance of harsh and difficult environments and access to (sometimes) limited quality items.
• Accept that there will probably be at least three punches in every task before it is finished
• Accept that actually there are no deadlines in this environment (99% of the time!) and that they are just self imposed and meaningless.
• It doesn't have to be perfect - it just has to be good enough. (This is a quote from Sarah!)
• All problems are fixable - it just takes a little time and creative knowledge (and possibly money!)
• You need to have the patience and mental fortitude to carry yourself through despite everything thrown your way.

Alot of the above is easier said that done!

It isn't easy for me unlearning decades of prior training but I am already noticing that stress levels are reduced and mentally I am not finding the incessant problem solving as demanding as it was.

Feedback From The Community

I would love to hear your throughts and experiences around both this situation described above. Around water supply or contractor works or how you handled you own similar experiences as an individual (or even as a team).

Or any advice or comments you would like to share.

There are a lot of lessons being learnt here and it would be great if my experiences will help others achieve their dreams along the way.

Final Thoughts!

One final comment - even though there are "down times" in this rollercoaster journey, the feeling of achievement when you do succeed in solving a problem, it is nothing short of incredible. Even Looking back six months the amount of progress we have made is absolutely fantastic!

With Sarah and Aom and these guys below in support. What could possibly go wrong!

Please do check out my YouTube Channel for videos and further detail here