#9 Eureka Organic Land – Back to farming!
Finally! Indeed, it has been a long time since we last worked in a farm. Our friends came from far away and we gave them all of the time we had for two months. After an amazing hiking in the Himalayan mountains (see post), we – Élise, Dimitri, Corentin and us - stayed for a while at Thomas’s farm in Chaughada. Thomas is a friend Yvan had met three years ago when he first came to Nepal. He was then working on building a restaurant for a Nepalese family. Since then he decided to set its own eco-responsible farm: Eureka Organic Land. Thomas despises the use of fertilizers, pesticides and GMO seeds because they endanger the health of farmers and Nepalese families. He aims at running an eco-tourism center providing free organic training and seed production by October 2018.
Eureka Organic Land
Ragnar in action
Thomas is a warrior – and we believe it is not a coincidence that he looks like famous Viking Ragnar. He believes that nothing must be easy in our lives. He walked from the consumerism model of western countries. He wants to be able to do anything – build, produce, create, etc. – by himself. He worked as roofer of historical monuments for years and thus got strong construction skills. With agriculture, he would like to learn how to produce its own healthy organic food. At the beginning, he only had a virgin land and a few walls. With his strong willingness he build his house and renewed and improved his fields over the last two years: corn, ginger, coconut trees, red and white cabbages, green peas, spices, basilica, tomatoes and more were growing fast. His ambitious project was taking shape.
Tomatoes in the greenhouse
White cabbages in the fields
A chaotic bus journey – it is a euphemism – led us to Chaughada, 30 km north of Kathmandu. Four volunteers were already at Thomas’s: Carmen, Julie, Blaise and Pierre. Carmen was an architect and was travelling through India and Nepal to learn about bamboo construction. She came to learn from Thomas’s expertise. The others met Thomas in Kathmandu and decided to have a nice stay in the Nepalese countryside for a few days. We shared intense moments of work and chill with these four. After a short swimming in the nearest river, Thomas explained us the main daily tasks: filling the tanks with water – no running water –, watering the plants at sunset and the usual cleaning tasks. Thomas’s rhythm is hard to follow: we get up at 5 am and go to sleep around 11 pm. The two weeks hiking behind us does not help…
Sébastien Loeb should try
Two works took the most of our time: building a new greenhouse with bamboo and improving the fields. As it is our 6th farm, we begin to know how to renew and improve fields. However, as we never did it, we took a lot of pleasure learning how to work with bamboo. With his past experience as a roofer Thomas is a true professional. With dynamism and firmness, he taught us how to use the chainsaw, the drilling machine, the billhook, and the bark scalpel with precision to adapt bamboo to our needs. The “green steel” as some call it, has excellent features when it come to construction. Its strong resistance, high elasticity and lightweight are perfect for a country often exposed to earthquakes and strong rains. Thomas already built a pergola, a bathroom and a greenhouse with it. His neighbors even asked him to build similar structures for them! Us three – Carmen, Dimitri and Tanguy – helped him from fixing the pillars to setting the roof. We were able to build a nice and strong greenhouse ready to host Thomas’s future plants.
Measuring
Cutting
And assembling
A piece of art
On the other hand, we worked hard in the fields. We had to dig and clean the soil to prepare it to receive new seeds: we pulled out weeds that take water and nutriments from the soil, and we dug deep to aerate it and improve its fertility. Our back curved, using spade and rake, we worked hard for two days to improve the fields. Thomas kept his young plants in a greenhouse. He had just planted ginger in high quantity and would like to keep planting spices, tomatoes, zucchinis and watermelons. He chose Élise and Yvan for this work. They had to plant and protect a high number of vegetables. Thomas tried to protect as much as possible his plants. He protected it from the sun – we set protection made of straws around the coconut trees – and the insects. Every morning we had to go kill the chenille surrounding the plants. To avoid bad karma, don’t forget to pronounce the famous Tibetan mantra Om mani padme hum. Buddhism forbids killing. Thomas strongly agreed with this philosophy and hated killing - even insects.
Beauty...
... and the beast
Teamwork
We may have worked hard in the fields but Thomas rewarded us well with his fine cuisine. With the products he had – he produced everything we ate except for milk, eggs and rice – it would have been hard to cook badly. Even the French chef Ducasse would pail tasting his amazing Dhal Bat. Yes we dared to say it. Time of farming went to an end as we got back to Kathmandu for our last days in Asia. Dimitri and Élise left us quickly. Corentin would stay with us until the end of the Nepalese trip. We let ourselves wander in the sacred Hindu and Buddhist sites of the city. First in the Pashupati temple: the house of Shiva rises on the banks of the Bagmati river, the most sacred one in Nepal. We walked between life and death, between children playing football and the bodies of the dead burning, surrounded by their families. Their ashes would be thrown in the sacred waters later. Not far from there we could see the Bodnath stûpa. A stûpa is an architectural structure - similar to a tumulus – where the relics of Buddha or one of his disciples are kept. As pilgrims walk they fell questioned by the eyes of the stûpa: the ordinary folks would say they are the eyes of the Buddha while the more educated ones talk about eyes seeing a reality our eyes cannot perceive.
Pashupatinath
Bodnath
We are not far from becoming Buddhists. We went in pilgrimage to Namo Buddha. 40 km away from Kathmandu, a stûpa was build to keep the bones of Buddha. The legend tells us that as a young prince he met a female tiger so weak it could not feed its children. As pity and compassion took his heart he offered his body to the tiger. A majestic monastery was build near the stûpa. Tibetan Buddhism is taught there. We had the opportunity to listen to the Tibetan chants paying tribute to the Rinpoche. The Rinpoche is an honorary title given to a lama – someone who teaches Tibetan Buddhism – recognized as the reincarnation of a great master of Buddhism – you could say he is the local Dalai Lama. We came back to Katmandu the heart filled with gratefulness to have had the opportunity to see such a rare ceremony. We ate our last Mo:Mo – a traditional Nepalese dish – and got ourselves ready to leave.
Cali temple with a sadhu
Namo Bouddha monastery
Nous partons pour notre dernière étape : l’Europe ! Atterrissage programmé à Belgrade, et après un court road-trip, nous irons travailler dans une ferme au Monténégro.
Les Balkans n’ont qu’à bien se tenir.
Sweets from the fields