Here is a sampling of the photos that Jourdan was able to take while she was here. Jourdan, I hope it’s Ok to put these up.

Enjoy!

 

PX1                SR1

 

Cheesy names I know, but it will have to do until someone gives me something more creative that is not hank or larry or silly.

These two machines have been working great for me. That is not usually the case with machines. I have the music from transformers going thru my head right now.

PX1 rips the skin off the coffee cherries so I can wash and dry them. Very easy to use, and works great! Even some of the Hmong coffee growers come up to pulp their coffee on it. Big Thanks to the folks at Muncie Alliance for purchasing this for us.

SR1 is my sample roaster. She took a little time to learn how to drive. After a little experience, I found she could follow any roast profile I wanted. SR1 has a couple details to iron out, like switching the transmission to worm gear, and putting a more variable burner, and airflow. Coming next summer will be… SR2. SR2 will also need a more creative name.

The big truck ambled it’s way up our mountains carrying an enormous wooden box on the back. I led the way on my Honda AX1. It was too late to unpack it just yet, so at dawn the next morning I grabbed the crowbar and went to work. It felt good to hammer and pry and rip boards off of the big crate. Finally we got the corners apart and folded the sides down to look inside. Fortunately everyone was still around and hadn’t run off to carry cabbages yet, because with all the equipment disassemble, the frame alone took 4 strong men with poles to ease down the dirt driveway to the machine’s new home. We finally got it all situated and later that day got all the parts put back together. I just brought home today the 13 HP engine to run this thing, and in a day or so we will put some coffee in it and see what happens.

 

 

most of the hard work is done for the coffee year. all that remains is to maybe mow once more and wait for harvest time joy. What we have so far are 3 test fields totalling about 2 acres. On this land grow 13 varieties of arabica including Gesha, French Typica, Typica II, Catui, Bourbon, Javan, and some others. Also, just for kicks, we have a few robusta and excelsa varieties.

I only have good photos of the sunny patches, as in the shade grown areas, (left side of upper photo) you cant see the trees for all the forest in the way.

coffee, indigo fera (sheep fodder), buckwheat (people fodder), peach, banana,

taro, macademia, jackfruit, ginger,

Pok. - (?)

the shade grown area always has really cool wild flowers

and of course with the exra bit of nature, come an extra bit of nature.

you'll just have to take my word for it.

lots of cool vines and flowers

too shady

So, our plan for next year is to try to locate more cool things to try and grow in this unique micro climate. Blueberries, Black pepper, Cherry, Cardomom, and vanilla – to name a few. We want to try and model and diverse, productive, proffitable, sustainable land stewardship example for people to see. Using the land rightly is just a small piece of the larger picture of redemption that has the power to change people’s lives. We focus alot on agriculture, because it is the language people speak.  and people need to eat too.

do not be fooled by our impressive intigrated agriculture project. It is just a costume we wear in the day time. at night we like to go around, seeing who is ready to hear what about Jesus. and then we tell them. more about that later.

The government awarded our village a 100,000 THB grant to build a new dam and hopefully improve our dry season water system. By the time each level had skimmed their fair share, we actually got to spend a whole 1/5th of it. (that’s a pretty good percentage for these parts)

lft>rt Chai, won(leaning over), tayaan (glasses) and chote

Uncle Sai

shaay (yellow) dan (white right)

That’s about how concrete contruction works in the back woods of the backwoods folk.

building my own house has been an exciting adventure. Work began almost a year ago, and thankfully, work is finally approaching a conclusion.

Here are some photos of the process:

any good house has to start with lots of dirt moved to the right places, and good foundations

good foundations of course begin with alot of concrete. (and lots of good people to help mix the concrete) …

… which begins with good coffee.

good foundations also need well placed forms …

and sometimes involve poorly placed hammers.

our temporary kitchen.

after the foundation come the bricks. (always wanted a lego house)

making bricks out of our dirt…

4156 bricks

two weeks later…

D is a pretty good builder.

theoretically these bricks fit together.

another month later…

the kids discovered a new place to hold their secret meetings.

still a dirt floor…

obvious.

again…

D makes the footwashing station – a necessity for modern muddy mountainside living.

the bathroom takes shape.

still ugly on the outside.

kham helped me out with a lot of the carpentry.

everyone had to come have a laugh at the foriegners 8 foot long bed. (I’m tired of having to hang my feet off the end)

sa smiles wider as the varnish vapors fill the house.

Dad took a break from his desk job to make sure the painting was done right.

looking good.

Yet another weird fruit, that I’ve never seen before. I found these growing in test field C .  They are very sour, but in an addictive way.  The number of things people find to eat around here never cease to amaze me.

The sample roaster has it’s own fire and thanks to a discarded windshield wiper drive system, It can turn it’s own drum.

Now if that isn’t the ugliest roaster I’ve ever seen…  I would be lying.  – I have seen worse, but that was in Laos.  So next up for this baby is a controll panel, data logger, and maybe even a fancy powdercoat.

Today the appeal to reconsider the ownership of Manipruek 3 people’s land will finally hit the governors desk. for the past month, Sa and I have been meeting with officials, interviewing old people, typing up statements, and an appeal, arranging a verified chronology of events, gathering singnatures, thumb prints. Sa assembled an impressive document outlining the history of the people of Manipruek 3 and why they should be able to farm their own land.

We have no doubt that this will be a long process. It already has been a long process. From when we first began work in Manipruek 3 we put their devestationg land situation in God’s wise hands and sure enough, an NGO I’ve never heard of came and initiated a large land organizing project aimed at helping various tribal villages organize and document the land they had been farming for the past generations. This was to aid in understanding between the Forestry Department, the National Parks Department, and the people themselves. The village of Manipruek 3 however, proved to be a whole different can ‘o’ worms.

Without going into detail, there is basically a complex overlap involving different government agencies, money, power, and old buried misunderstandings.

Still we have no idea how this will turn out, we are just confident that God will bring about a conclusion that makes Him look good to people.

Just a quick alert that I updated some of the tabs with exciting new revised and current information. You can read a newer coffee project description, glance over a basic outline, and see what we still need to complete the project. There is even an exciting history of the Manipruek 3 Village based on accounts of 9 of the village elders.

Thanks for reading. -Kaleb