Dad's Farm Conquest Continues... Resistance Is Futile

[00:00:22]All right. So, Pinky is out of town today.  So, that means I get to hold down the fort here. and she is off on another family trip  as one of the relatives died and I think it was one of her aunts. So seems to happen with  a fair amount of frequency and maybe it's just one of those things that like as you get older  the frequency of the people around you dying increases. Now all the family that has died  off since we've been here in the village has pretty much been her parents' generations, their  brothers, their sisters, that sort of thing which they're in their 70s and I guess that's to be  expected. So, every time that does happen though, there is a funeral death ceremony where this thing  can last from one but typically up to 3 days where they're playing music and food and it's going all  day, all night, all the family joins in and uh is there to I guess support one another or whatever.  And like that whole thing just seems kind of weird to me. Whether it's western funerals or these  Thai funerals and ceremonies where you'll go years sometimes decades without seeing a friend, family  member, loved one, whatever it is. Uh you may or may not talk on the phone. Probably not. Maybe  very very infrequently, but uh you just don't make it any sort of priority at all to go visit that  person. But the moment that they die, you drop everything and go there. And it's like seems odd  that obviously you know there's a lot of people in in each person's life and you know you can't  necessarily keep a close relationship with all of them. But to go that long without seeing anybody  and then you drop everything and go see them when they're dead like that to me almost seems well a  little offputting or a little insulting. It's like hey you didn't make the effort to come see me when  I was alive but as soon as I'm dead you're there tomorrow. So I don't know. I mean that's just  tradition. That's the way it is. I don't make the rules, but it does seem a little strange. Now,  something else that I find odd in the village here is that when somebody in the village here dies,  there is a uh sort of death tax that all of the other villagers pay. So when somebody here in  the village calls it a day and taps out of life, there is a person that goes around and collects  uh 20 baht from everybody in the village, children included up to uh those who are age  60 and instead of 20 baht, those folks at age 60 or higher pay 30 baht. I guess they uh pay  a premium because they are that much closer to uh collecting on on this fee. So, uh, this money  is rounded up and then I guess distributed to the family member of the deceased to help with the  ceremony cost and, uh, the ritual, uh, like monk ceremony at the temple and all the bodies are  burned. Uh, they're not buried. They're they're typically burned here. There's a cost for all  that stuff and that money goes to help. But from what I can tell, that program, at least here in  this village, is administered by one person. Uh, I'm not sure how he got that job, but there's  no, from what I can tell, no, no accounting or accountability or sort of audit trail. He  just goes around, pockets a bunch of money, and I guess we're all trusting that he gives  the appropriate portion. I would hope all of it, but maybe, you know, I mean, maybe he gets paid  for his effort. He works on commission. I don't know what he does, but there's some transfer of  money every time somebody dies here in in the village. It's kind of a cool system. It's just  different. Um, you know, kind of pay as you go.

[00:04:14]with Pinky and her parents out of town at the  death ceremony. I figured I would help out. All right, feels like deja vu all over again. It is  the last day of June and what I believe should be well into rainy season. And in fact, we had  like two or 3 weeks of very steady rains, five, six times a week. It was absolutely pouring.  Everything turned green. Everything was wet.

[00:04:39]It was awesome. And now I think we're going  on nearly at least two, maybe closer to three weeks with really no rain at all. A couple of  passing showers. I've seen rain around the area, but none right here at our place. So, our  green crops are looking a little less green and a little more yellow. And I've had to dig  into my old bag of tricks here and drag out my irrigation supplies that I thought I had put  away for many more months. Now, I'm not going to be able to water everything on the property,  but I went around and watered a lot of these trees today by hand. And the primary goal today  is dad's peanut farm here, which he put a ton of work into and has kind of held up so far, but the  peanuts are starting to wilt. And I'm going to get water to as much of it as I can. Now, I don't  think I have enough hose to get all of it, but I'm going to do what I can here. And I figure if  nothing else, all of this work and effort in the 90 plus degree heat almost guarantees that we're  going to get rain tonight. So, let's get to it.

[00:05:56]Oh my god.

[00:06:35]All right, this is pretty good. That sprinkler  is covering more than I anticipated. And I got enough hose, I think, to cover the entire  peanut field here. It means I'm going to be camped out here all afternoon moving the  sprinkler around to different sections. But I think it's enough to get it done. And  again, looks like this is going to rain, so all this effort pretty much  guarantees that it's a win either way.

[00:07:01]All right. Well, looks like this is my  afternoon. I wanted to take a nap anyway, so I guess I'm doing it down here in the  cow barn. Got my water, earbuds for some podcast listening. I got a bag of fruit in  case I feel scurvy coming on. And uh yeah, I will sit here and watch the peanuts grow.  Every 20 or 30 minutes, I'll have to get up, run over, and reposition the sprinkler. But  guess this is my Tuesday afternoon. I'll take it.

[00:07:52]So, I've been bouncing around all afternoon  watering different sections of this peanut field and so far so good. But, as you can see, right  over there is an active rainstorm. And that's been the story here for the past like two weeks as we  sit here in the dryness and watch the surrounding area get soaked here, which normally would be cool  unless you're trying to grow peanuts. I guess you kind of want the rain. The sprinkler slowly but  surely is making its way across the field and uh should be done in another hour or so. I'm  guessing that some of the rice farmers are stressing out about this rain situation too where  I had mentioned we had gotten a bunch of it a few weeks ago and now it has stopped and some of  these rice fields I noticed these guys got a pretty early start. They planted the rice, the  rice is growing and now the fields are drying up. Now some of these farmers have access to  water. They have ponds. They have wells. They have water that they can pump onto their uh rice  patties and rice fields and irrigate stuff. A lot of these guys don't. They are just waiting on the  rain. So, I don't know what happens. I haven't talked to anybody about it, but I can only assume  that uh going to be pretty stressful watching your livelihood dry up while staring at the sky,  hoping that at some point the rain returns.

[00:09:13]And right on queue, I'm about finished up watering  the field and it's raining. I'll take it though.

[00:09:21]I don't know if this is just going to be a passing  shower or if it's going to really soak the ground.

[00:09:25]There's been like four or five days in a row  where it looked like it was going to rain. So, I held off on watering and today I was  finally like I have to go out and do it. And it's raining. So, peanuts are  extra happy today. I hope So, what's going on down here? I'm jumping in  there. I see my dad coming with these guys.

[00:10:50]What are you doing? Oh, what a smooth uh Yeah, I  was going for a walk and I see the tractor. He's pointing at our house. I'm like, "Oh, that's  where he's going." Your dad comes riding out all all smiles on the bike. So, what do we uh what  do we plant? What are what's the plan? What are we going to plant here? To uh drill the uh remember  the duck? Oh, this is where the duck pen is going.

[00:11:13]Wait. So, I got to smooth it out. Okay. So, we  got to till it with this or plow with this and then they're going to flatten it with something  else with the tractor. You going to grade it?

[00:11:23]Nice. All right. What do we got to pay this guy?  I don't know. What did my dad? Maybe some one bottle of uh the one I buy in a thing. And nice  whiskey. All right. Cool. Uh I understand your dad probably isn't familiar with composting. He burned  everything. He burned our entire compost pile.

[00:11:47]Okay. Awesome. We call it a compost  pile. Dad called it a burn pile. It's gone. [ __ ] pile. Yeah. Gone. Oh wow.  I didn't want to mix this in tend to it either. So dad's somehow burned it all  down to a smoldering pile of nothing.

[00:12:11]So, while I'm excited to see more action here  on the farm, it is a little bittersweet and that the field that they are plowing is the one  that I have, I don't know, countless hours and hours and hours into sourcing the right grass  seed, planting it, watering it, fertilizing it, watering it some more, and watering it and  watering it and just trying to get it to take off.

[00:12:29]And this grass was specifically purchased for  tortoise food. I wanted to have my own little tortoise food garden so that I could feed them  from the farm and not have to buy stuff. and it just never did well. It sprouted, it grew, but  it never got more than like 5 in. And it was like supposed to be, you know, a foot or two tall. And  sometimes you just got to come to the realization that just cuz you put a ton of time and energy  into stuff doesn't mean that it's going to pay off. And you got to move on. So, uh, all is not  lost. I also have an area where I threw some of those same seeds and put virtually no care, no  water, let them just sit there all through dry season and the rain and whatever natural elements  have sprouted it into this stuff, which is like knee high at this point. So, I've got an entire  field of stuff that I put zero energy into that is producing way more than the stuff that I put a  lot of time and energy and effort and thought and research into. So, I don't know, man. Sometimes  it's a good representation of life is you you freaking kill yourself to do something or try to  hit a goal or get something done and it just falls flat. Whereas other things you could shoot from  the hip and carelessly throw literally throw seeds into the wind and you got more tortoise food than  an army of tortoises could eat. So, I don't know.

[00:14:54]So, when asked if they could tear up the land  and flatten it out and do all this stuff. Yeah, sure. That'd be great. I would like that.  You would like that. Let's do it. But I asked one thing. Can you not plow over the  grave where mama tortoise was buried? Sure, no problem. Dad's got it. We got it. I  asked like I don't know how many times.

[00:15:10]Make sure we don't hit that. Yeah, he's not  going to hit it. What does he do? The first thing the guy does when he backs in that  corner is [ __ ] plow right through it. So, I don't know, man. Sometimes I'm ready to  just rip my hair out. I don't ask for a walk.

[00:15:45]So, tractor driver just apologized.  He said the dad did tell him twice not to hit that spot. He totally forgot  about it. So, he clearly felt bad and uh did a good job plowing some extra  dirt up. So, crisis averted here.

[00:16:10]All right. So, Tractor Man has just finished up  grading this. And I'm super psyched because he not only flattened out and graded this whole field, he  also significantly improved the grade coming down here. So, it was a little dicey before just even  walking down that, especially when it was wet, slippery grass. And it wasn't really suitable  for driving a truck over or tacktac or tractor or anything like that. But now, we've got a freaking  highway offramp there. So, quick access down here.

[00:16:42]The only other way down to the back end of the  property since we did all this other work here is to drive all the way around the property and  come down here. But now we've got a direct access right out. So, pretty stoked with that. And  you can see there is more tractoring going on behind me here. I'm not sure what the plan is, but  dad's got his eyes on planting something out here, which I think is awesome. Now, this is the  area that we when we expanded the pond, we dug all that fill out and then raised this  whole area here. And uh I've got my tortoise grass growing on part of it. And looks like we are  soon to have something else growing right here.

[00:17:30]Now, I'm still not quite sure what we're going  to do with this space. Pinky's been making noise about raising ducks. She wants some sort of  like duck enclosure down here and a fence and the whole thing tied right into the pond so the  ducks can come out and do their thing. I don't know. I'm not against it. I don't really have a  lot of enthusiasm for taking care of ducks. So, that'll be her project for sure. What has  me more excited is I'm kind of scoping up this area over here for potential area  for a pickle ball court, which I'm not a diehard pickle ball player by any means, but  I do enjoy it. And it would give Pinky and I something to do without having to go anywhere.  I think the the closest pickle ball court that I'm aware of is like an hour plus away, which I  would never drive an hour to play pickle ball, but if I had one right here in my  yard, I think that'd be pretty amazing.

[00:18:30]All right, dad's here this morning. I  was wondering how long this was going to take. He has rolled in this morning in the  tacktac and I see the gas powered pond pump, the muck pump in the back of the trailer. And I  think what the plan is today is he is going to pump water from the pond and irrigate probably  the peanuts or the bamboo or something. Now, as you guys saw, I watered the peanuts the  other day with the sprinkler, and that was after a extended period of of drought.  And as you saw at the end of me watering, it did start to rain, but that rain shower  was pretty short-lived. So, uh, it helped, but uh, it's been now a few days since then,  and stuff is still super dry. It's still cloudy, it's overcast, there's rain happening around.  It always looks like we're right on the verge of raining. It gets windy, you're like, "Oh, it's  coming." And then nothing. So, I think dad today has finally decided he's got to take matters  into his own hands. Going to get the water in.

[00:19:40]Short people doing short things.

[00:19:46]What am I going to do?

[00:19:50]So, as you can see, dad just continues to  make this property his own, which I know from some angles may look strange that I'm just  letting him completely overtake the property, but truth of the matter is I love what he's doing  here. And I have had to push back on a couple of things like uh for example, use of pesticides  and chemicals. I'm pretty certain that every Thai farmer at birth was issued a backpack sprayer  and told to liberally and without prejudice just hose every living thing down with some sort of  chemical, whether it be fertilizer or pesticide or whatever. Man, if you got juice, spray it on  the crops. You see them out there everywhere. So I have drawn a line there in terms of uh chemical  application of things and pretty much said if you can't grow it reasonably naturally with you know  manure fertilizer and that type of stuff then then don't bother doing it. So there's been a couple  of those type of things where I push back on. But as for the rest of the property I mean I really  like what he's doing. He's taken this barren six ride property and has broken it up into different  segments. We got the peanuts. We've got various trees. We've got, you know, all kinds of stuff  going on. And I really like that little trails and roads and stuff going through the property.  Let's face it, I never would have done any of that myself. I would have probably done some  things and fiddled around, but the fact that he's just turned this into such a neat little  working property with all these different zones with things different things going on and he's  still working hard at it, like I really enjoy it.

[00:21:21]Snake. So, yeah. Uh, I'll continue to to push back  and no doubt we'll be annoyed and there'll be some uh back and forth over what I can live with and  what I can't. He's done a good job humoring me, but in the grand scheme of things, I just  like that he's out here making stuff happen.

[00:21:45]What's going on over here? I thought  this was not the edible bamboo.

[00:21:51]You told me this is for like construction and  building stuff. And the young younger one you can eat. But why are we messing around with that  little stuff down on the other end of the farm when we got this giant pile up here? Because  they have a a poking stuff and hard to like get into and they big. See? Holy [ __ ] Look at that  one. That's like 10 kilos by itself. You cutting all all those little ones. But not you cannot  sell that price because it's different kind.

[00:22:17]This is for the poor people. Yeah, very  much. Yeah, they said that the Wow, not like this not belong to us. It belong to  my uncle. I say this isn't even our property, right? Oh, so we're pirating it. It's not really  pilot. Everybody can uh like my family member can come take it if they want it. Like if I see it  long and I I cut it up and bring it over and you can chair like they're making some food and then  like my aunt give me something that she cook from this my cousin but she cook up something from  bamboo that I cut and she just bring it over.

[00:22:57]So everybody kind of contributes a little bit  chair like if I cut it and I bring it they cook and then they bring me food. Seems like a pretty  good deal. But nobody like to come here because it's We have one, two, and three over there.  So, we're going to try to get it all. Yeah, these things are brutal. I cut a few of these  for the tortoise pen and like ended up a bloody scratched up mess. Yeah. Hard to cut. And  then it's not really like it's for eat, but I'm getting attacked by one  of these things right now.

[00:23:33]your eyes.

[00:23:38]Keep them.

[00:23:42]Yes. Yay. We made it. Holy cow. Look  at that thing. Feed half the village.

[00:23:55]Black.

[00:24:19]Ah.

[00:24:51]Hey. Hey. Hey.

[00:25:24]This definitely puts my  garden hose sprayer to shame.

[00:25:58]So, it looks like the boys have finished up  and the peanut field has been flooded. plants, I guess, look pretty happy. Notice they uh left  all the riggings in place here. So, just in case we still get no rain, they can come over here and  remove that waterproof cardboard box protective cover and uh give it another round of watering  if need be. I also gave dad the green light to finally cut down a good amount of my tortoise  grass. Now, it's been driving him nuts cuz he is a class A grass scavenger. or if there is grass  growing anywhere that he can harvest and keep, whether it's on his land or he gets the okay  to get it from somewhere else or he goes out, I don't know where he goes, but he comes back with  these truckloads of grass to feed his cows. It's like his primary purpose in life is to feed these  cows. And he's been looking at this grass that I've been growing, and I know he he's wanted  it. He's asked for it, and I've told him no because it was for the tortoises. And today, I  realized I'm just going to have way more grass than I could ever feed to the tortoises. So,  dad finally got the okay to come out here and uh he went to town with his weed whacker and cut  that down and got go over here to help him pick it up and card it off. So, cows are happy, dad's  happy, and tortoises will still be well fed.