Smart Solutions for a Sustainable Future: Tackling Water Scarcity Head-On

It was early September and we should have been more than 3 months into the rainy season. I turned to P’Lern, our part time help on the land and had to instruct him to turn off the water, and stop watering the trees.

We were down to our last 200 litres of water.

With other areas of Thailand suffering flooding – it was hard to believe that yet again we were into our second year in a row of severe drought.

For the first time ever we had to seriously question if this was the correct site for this project and whether we should scale It back to the barest minimum, or even back out completely.

5 hours later, that very same day, the rain hit so hard it filled our last swale (number 4) with (at least) 50,000 litres of water.

I’ve talked in the past about the “roller coaster ride” and 2 steps forward one step back (TSFOSB) etc and here we were again.

If we were to move forward with any kind of confidence for the future, we HAD to find a solution to the water problem and be 100% sure of water supply.

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Months of Effort, One Goal: Ensuring a Reliable Water Supply

The last four months or so have been completely focused on growing our water supply and developing other smart systems.

This is (some of) what we have been working on!

• Drilling more borehole(s) to guarantee supply
• Finishing 2 Sets of Rain Water Collection Tanks (24,000 litres)
• Installing an automated irrigation system
• Lining the Small Pond with concrete to retain as much rainwater as possible
• Building a 2 bed, small house for workers/guests

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Digging Deep(er) for Water Security

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After much discussion and through local connections, we managed to find another borehole drilling company, who had carried out work for our close friends and had successfully found a premium grade supply of water for them in the local area.

The initial ultrasound surveys yet again, were very promising. Their first attempt was OK but the results were not brilliant. So, they tried drilling in another location – this unfortunately failed to deliver.

They then reverted back to the first bore hole - which after further work eventually delivered around 3000 litres in a day.

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?Delivering 3000 litres a day was frankly not the news we wanted to hear – but it did meet the “sufficient” criteria. At this point in time we need every drop we can access.

To put this into perspective - Other boreholes in the area deliver 10,000 litres in a day and are capable of delivering more.

On the plus side the quality of install was pretty good, especially the way that they terminated the borehole itself.

This tank also now has a pump that feeds our rainwater tanks!

We now have 2 boreholes running – totaling around 5-6000 litres in a day. If it continues to deliver – this is fantastic news!

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Rain Storage, Drought Protection, Every Drop Counts

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Earlier in the year we had partially installed 8 tanks of 3000 litres each. 4 at each end of the workshop. Even though the roof areas are not equal, we are trying to absolutely maximize the amount of rainwater we can collect at one time.

The Good News is that these are now fully installed correctly and all tanks connected together, meaning we now have access to 12000 litres, each side. In addition to this we have now installed yet another new water system.

It’s always about the water!

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New, Fully Automatic Irrigation System, Watermation?

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Watering all this area of land by hand is labour intensive, costly and time consuming. Previously during the period when we were hitting 40 degrees C – it took around 6 hours to water everything – just to keep it alive.

This isn’t a complaint by the way, just acknowledging that we need to work smarter!

It was clear that we had to find a smarter way of working so we decided to install a fully automatic watering system for the whole hedge line (150m) and around 45 trees spread over both sides of the land. This system is expandable both by the number of zones and timing of the irrigation.

We will still have to water some areas manually of course but hopefully this will help manage the work load.

?Again – we were fortunate to have great quality installers for this system – it was built to a very high standard.

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Lining Up Success: Pond 2.0!

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For followers of our youtube channel, you may have seen this news already – but after much deliberation and discussion we decided to bite the bullet and line our little pond with concrete.

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?From an environmental perspective – I was uncomfortable with this choice but honestly, the alternatives were expensive and poor quality, if they lasted 2 or 3 years I would be surprised.

The really amazing thing for me – is that even though we chose concrete as the liner, which is not environmentally friendly to produce, the positive immediate impact on the local environment was nothing short of incredible.

Within a few days there was a huge increase in the number of dragonflies, Frogs and Toads etc, so for me it was quite ironic to witness this positive effect from what I viewed as the use of a negative material.

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A Welcoming Space for Workers (Or Guests!)

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Another major realization for both myself and Art has been that we are both still very busy people and as the farm develops, we need assistance to keep it to the high standard that we both desire. It is hard physical work and the amount of work increases as we organically “grow” the farm.

Again, this isn’t a complaint! But we both recognize that help is actually much needed.

So, the major piece of news here is that we have started work to build a small “Worker/Guest” house next to the small pond.

This will have 2 bedrooms and a small shower/toilet facility. We are making very steady and relatively fast progress with this – so it should be finished by the end of Oct 24.

It won’t be five stars but it will be clean, new and functional!

I also plan to put a silt filtration system on the small pond so it could end up being a natural pool to swim in!

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Final Thoughts To Take Away And What’s Next?

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That’s the update for the last few months – it’s been busy and demanding as ever, but we are starting to see real changes in soil quality.

The rain has actually finally arrived in full force – albeit 4 months later than expected but it’s a huge relief to actually get water.

The swales are driving water into the ground systems which I believe over time will completely change the soil from dead over-farmed sand into a thriving natural environment.

We are finding mushrooms growing regularly now which for me is fantastic news as it shows that the soil is starting to regenerate and get some life into it and our workers are enjoying them immensely too!

For the immediate future – we have to develop the irrigation systems further so we can deliver more water efficiently and to where it’s needed.

We are also developing raised garden beds – so hopefully we should start producing more usable vegetables, moving towards that fully sustainable lifestyle.

We need to do more work on our filtration systems both for the domestic water supply and the small pond, which will also get a solar powered filtration system.

If the water supply is now stabilized, the next area we have to focus on is the soil quality.

With this in mind we have also planted 150 banana trees to help with regeneration along with planting 3 rai of Sunn Hemp (or Por Teuang is the Thai name). This is an amazing cover crop which fixes nitrogen into the soil and generates huge amounts of compost at the same time.

As ever the three Mutt-Keteers are in attendance and as helpful as ever, with their major input being sleeping as much as possible. At least when there aren’t looking for, or asking for food!

?Rudie will be going in for her operation in the next few weeks, so wishing that goes well for her. She is actually bigger than Bruno now.

As ever this is a hugely inspiring journey for me, demanding and sometimes stressful but always at the end of the day, when the sun starts to set, there is that feeling that the place is turning into something really magical.

Looking back feels like the progress is slower than it should be but actually it is really steaming ahead. Even going back only a few months shows major changes in the whole farmstead, and it’s amazing to watch.

I hope you are enjoying being along for the ride with us and also finding this journey inspiring. For more updates you can follow us at our Youtube Channel Here:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheSmartGardenRomYenHouse

Take Care Guys

Matt Williams