When speaking of fun space, many people may think about some amusement parks where people are having fun with the music and parade as a background. But for me, my amusement park is full of life, trees, flowers, grass, vegetables, birds, insects, sunlight, wind, and myself that come with the propulsion of the occurrence of life in the garden, hand fork, trolleys, mowers and machetes.
"I make our garden" is my own great intention. I call it great because I have to tolerate the sun and use hard labor to accomplish this mission. After I saw my mom buy spring onions for cooking and often got rotten in a matter of days. I, then started to think that as a land owner, why not making our land our own refrigerator? I started by using the base of the onions that my mother bought from the market, did the root cutting and place it along the edges of other plants and it went well. Next, I moved to do the same thing with celery berries, and I got the same positive result. So, from there, I started doing this with many other plants such as Jingju, thyme, lemongrass, mint, and etc. Once I started getting the principle of it, I expanded it to a larger ground and it got more fun. My amusement park is even more fun because there is a creature called chicken.
I raise the chickens because I want to have the freshest and most organic eggs that I had come out of the chicken that day. This was a very exciting and high learning period, because I spent almost 5 months looking after from a little baby chick to becoming the first egg mother. At first, I started by buying chicks from a pet store. These animals are not naturally strong, but have the advantage of large eggs and high egg production rates. Sometimes when they got sick, and. I had to give them medication. Often that I got so discouraged because I had to be busy with being a doctor for these chickens. So, I tried to change to a new plan by asking for the local chickens from the villagers to raise. Then, I brought the foreigner chicken eggs given by my friend to the hens to hatch: 21 days passed, I got a baby chickens that looks like a foreign child born to a Thai mother. After hatching for 1 day, the mother hen will fly the baby out of the nest and get used to eating natural food in the ground. When one week passed, I saw the easy eating and survival of these chickens with their instincts are different from those that were hatched from the industrial farm system. Two months have passed and the vaccine has not been used. After 3 months the chicken has grown without needing to find herbs for them anymore and a month later the chickens had grown fully. After the 5th month, the hens started to have the first egg for us to eat, while some roosters have large cresting and started to crow every morning, late afternoon, evening and two in the morning, indicating that they are a healthy and strong rooster. Even though the roosters can produce no egg, but we can use them to build a relationship with people who want to make a breed in exchange for paddy to feed other chickens. Aside from the cuteness that the roosters have to offer, at least there is still a reward as a dung for us every day. Also, they are a very handsome breeder which is good for the day of wanting to expand the amount of chickens.
Let’s use the dung as a fertilizer for our vegetables.
Under the bed of the chicken, I used a net to place the pad like a cradle. The chickens go to the same place and excrete every day. The net is very good at collecting chicken dung and is also good at letting the dung dried, so it doesn't feel disgusting to gather the dung to make fertilizer. In the compost pile, we can leave everything that is digested together. The trick is to have wet and dry things arranged in alternating layers. Wet items include wet dung and fresh waste, while dry items include twigs, leaves, and paper scraps. If you are afraid of a foul odor, be sure to cover the top with dry leaves every time, but you must always have to take care of the moisture of the compost pile regularly. It takes nearly 3 months for food scraps we collected to help the dry leaves and branches to decompose together into "humus", which is the key to the growth of plants without chemicals in organic farms. We can start using this from bottom of the pile of fertilizer. The top and outer surfaces of the fertilizer pile will decompose more slowly because of the loss of moisture at all times. But it's not a problem because we just throw it out and simply use it as an ingredient in a new pile of fertilizer.
Sift the fertilizer to making a vegetable plot.
The fertilizer that is suitable for use will look like the soil that has been sifted through a sieve, screening for the non-biodegradable parts and then sprinkling those fertilizers on top of the soil where you want to grow vegetables. Use a hand fork to dip into the plot at an angle of 30-45 degrees to the soil to allow the compost and air to penetrate though. Repeat this throughout the entire plot. After a while you will find that you can divide a large piece of clay into small pieces using our two hands. If the soil is quite dry, sprinkle a little water, making it in a form alike the raindrop. Then apply the second compost on the plot. Try stabbing the soil again, as you will start to notice that the soil is crumblier, more tender. It won't take long to prepare 1 small vegetable plot with just one person anymore. When the soil is ready, if there is a seedling, it can be moved immediately. However, this should be done after 3 p.m. so that the seedlings do not suffer from too much sunlight during the day. But for some vegetables such as the seeds of bog choy, morning glory, coriander, spinach and kale, these can be sown into the ground at any time.
Grow a variety of vegetables to let the grass grow too.
"Grass" is considered an inevitably useful crop for organic farmers. Although the grass grows faster than the vegetables, the grass is also a good mentor to spread the leaves to shade our little vegetables. At a certain time, the grass grew to obscure the sunlight that shone into the vegetables. We need to remove the grass by plucking and placing it on the ground between the plants in the plot. Those grass will gradually decompose with the work of soil microbes. Grass debris helps to maintain moisture on the soil surface just like the straw. But it’s better as we do not have to waste time to find straw from a distance to cover the soil anymore.
Planting folk flowers for its joyful bloom.
Not long after gardening I took the seeds of cosmos flowers, marigolds, cockscomb, and amaranth to sprinkle all over the garden. These seeds have the potential to germinate and grow very well, have a tall bush, colorful flowers, and are attractive to the insects. In addition, they grow and compete with weeds to help hide the sun, causing weeds to not grow in time. And if we see that these flower plants are about to eat the area for the growth of the vegetables we grow, we can trim the bushes or pull them out to make fertilizer without regret. But believe that these cheerful, blooming folk flowers can soak us in joy just like roses on Valentine's Day, plus they can lure insects to create a good ecology in the garden without the use of bio-chemicals after all.
It’s time to harverst.
It was the day that I waited for after sowing and watering them so well. I carefully collected those vegetables and cooked with meticulousness combined with imagination and other raw materials obtained from other fellow farmers.
I intend to eat too much until there is no food left in every meal. The deliciousness was a taste of the joyfulness of my ingredients that I work together with the nature rather than wanting to praise myself alone. The food I planted myself was really delicious, and the background behind the deliciousness of vegetables and fruits came from household waste and chicken dung in my backyard
Someone said that when we say thank you to the small things that happen around at least 3 times a day after waking up, we will find only good things every day and we tend to become a happy person easier. Living each day in my own amusement park although tired, however, when doing and seeing the result, I never wanted the sun to go down as I want to keep doing it all the time. Therefore, I want to:
Thank you to the sun for always coming up in every morning.
Thank you to the roosters for always crow to wake me up in the middle of the garden.
Thank you to all living things that do their job consistently, even small microbes that are invisible to the eye, but together with hundreds and billions of them, they become an awesome team in the garden.
I always feel thankful to these three things daily. I firmly believe that the amusement park will be an area for us to come in and enjoy every day. And I wholeheartedly encourage everyone to create their own amusement park for their own fun and their own choice of safe food.
Author
Noon – Natkanag Prichaborisutkul
Farmer/ Safe Food Producer/
Organic Soap and Shampoo Producer/ Self-managed Trainer