10 Days Farm Volunteering Experience
Sahainan Permaculture Organic Farm has been an education center of permaculture and sustainability for the locals and international. The word “Sahai” means “comrades” or “companions”, they go together, they guide each other, they spend time together, they dream together, work and play together, they support each other.
We welcome anyone who loves to help and experience simple fun wild life in food forest with our farm family.
Our farm life is pretty much depending on the rhythm of nature. We wake up and sleep relying on the sun, we work and rest relying on the sky.
Sometime we are lazy, we don’t do anything. We can just watch the clouds, stars, moon, greens, and feel the present moment of life. But we are always so motivated to our work because we love our job, which is working on dream of human-race to create an earthly paradise. Life is fun and precious, live fully. We work for happiness and inner satisfaction.
We offer 10 days farm experience to everyone who wish to have an opportunity to stay and join farm activities that we are doing according to the day and season rhythm.
You can indulge your self in food forest nature, and receive a unique hands-on learning experience on a wide range of projects, example are like:
Planting trees
Making compost
Planting fruits, herbs, vegetables, herbs and rice paddies
Natural water filtration
Maintaining seed nurseries, rice fields, food forests and gardens
Harvesting
Food storage and preparation, rice dehusking
Cooking
Rerofestation jungle, greening the dry lands
Working with hand-tools to build houses and furniture using locally-sourced wood, bamboo and mud
Community outreach and permaculture education
Spending time with kids
And many more!
You are also welcome to stay less or more than 10 days.
Please check the special programs or special professional skill we love to exchange with you:
— Interested in volunteering long-term? Check the detail here 80 Days Volunteering Program and 80 Days Carpentry Internship & Volunteering Program.
— If you have a good skill of making videos, we need you! Please click professional photography & videography.
We also accept and welcome individual or groups who come for educational internship.
What We Provide
Accommodation: We build our huts with bamboo, mud, teak wood or whatever material we can get. We also provide mosquito nets, mattress, pillow, and blankets. Most huts have no walls for air ventilation and enjoy nature ambience. We use solar power system for electricity, no air-cond and no fan. All huts have toilets nearby, some attached toilet, or you can just complete your business in forest under a tree. If you prefer to sleep in a tent, there's plenty of good camping spots scattered around the farm. At night, there are water dripping and insect music orchestra. Our guests described their stay here as “Billion Stars Luxury Off Grid Camping”. We have chickens in farm so you can bring “ear plug” to cover your ears if you think the cock-a-doodle-doo can disturb you.
Food: we cook on fire stove with firewood collected in the farm. Farm harvested organic brown rice and vegetarian or vegan food will be prepared depending on harvest of the day. When needed, we will have other stuff from local farmer friends and local market to support the organic planting community. We are very used to prepare special diet such as gluten-free or any other allergic diet (gluten/peanuts/soy bean/mango/sesame..), please inform us if you have any allergic. We do not use any aluminum pot or wok for cooking, we use stainless steels utensils, coconut bowls, bamboo spoons and bamboo chopsticks. As healthy living is part of our lifestyle, we consciously choose good quality material and ingredients in our kitchen, such as premium oil, salt, honey, soy sauce, etc. Students and volunteers are encouraged to involve and learn in cooking. Our meals are fusion of Thai, Northern Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, Western, no limitation!
Electricity: We generate electricity from solar panels. Some houses are equipped with energy but not all, however we have a charging station that everyone can use for charging phone, headlamps, and laptop. Please bring your own charger.
Toilet and Shower: We have successful self-composting toilets (hassle-free, odorless, you will not see others poop in the toilet) and showers, you need to bring your own towels, and tissue paper (if you need). We allow only organic soap which is free from SLS, Paraben or any other harmful chemicals. You can buy organic soap in our farm (50 Baht).
Internet: Free WiFi is available at coffee shops and restaurants about a 5 minutes motorbike ride (25 minutes walk) from the farm. You can also use internet access form your phone with a Thai sim card, anytime. Cellphone reception on the farm is good, but only for Thai cellphone services like True, AIS and DTAC, and signal from True is the best in our farm so far.
Water: We are blessed to have 100% clean spring water from mountain about 1km away from our farm for using. It doesn’t pass by any village or farm thus doesn’t contaminated by any household or agricultural chemical. This springs water from forest is safe to drink directly, but we still have water filter system to make our water even cleaner and safe. Everyone loves the sweet fresh taste of our natural spring water. It distinctively makes our tea, coffee, and food tasty!
Laundry: we wash our laundry with water and soap in the buckets. There is laundry service if you need.
Weather: Please check the weather forecast in Thung Chang, from November to March the temperature can be as low as 5’C in some night, we provide extra blankets but please also prepare suitable clothing such as warm jacket. From March to June can be quite hot in the afternoon like 38’C in some day. From June to October is the raining season, this is the time when we do most of the planting, so it is perfect for those who love to learn and experience planting with us especially rice planting.
Yoga & Meditation: we have a big multipurpose hall that we can do yoga, meditation, and enjoy sunrise. It can fit about 20 person for yoga. You can bring your yoga mat if you like yoga and meditation.
Transport: Our farm is 3km from the main road, around 25 minutes by walking. If you need to go to town, you can follow our car whenever we are going. We have no service taxi here, but we have two motorbikes that we can rent you for 250 Bath per day, to support these motorbike yearly taxes and the maintenance fee.
Nearby touristic places: We are very near to Nan River in Huay Phan Village, the river is crystal clear when there is no rain around the mountains. The kids in the village swim and play in the river every afternoon. Jungle trekking are offered by the villagers in village, they can guide you for forest foraging and waterfall, you can also request to stay one or two nights in the forest with them, the price is about 1000Baht per person for one night. We have local communities who own local traditional handmade cotton and silk factory, with organic cotton, plants to extract natural dyes, teak wood trees and bamboos to make the weaving machine. Many weaving are exported to Japan or sent to Chiang Mai and Bangkok, but if you buy directly from her with factory price, you save so much than buying in the big city! Other than that, we have sustainability-conscious communities who are bee keeper, artist, musicians, natural healing therapist, animal farmer, carpenter, Waldorf school educator……If you wish to have day trip travelling around Nan or Thung Chang Touristic places, we can ask taxi service for you. The transportation fee depend on the location you go, range from 500 Baht to 5000 Baht.
Everything else—the beautiful mountain scenery, the new friendships, the simple lifestyle and the limitless opportunities for education and personal growth—is all part of the experience!
Flexible daily activity:
6am- harvesting, prepare breakfast and activities, yoga and meditation
7.30am- breakfast
8am- morning volunteering activities
10.30am- prepare lunch
12pm- lunch and siesta. You can have your freedom such as spending time with yourself or others. Our freedom of farm life: spending time with kids, reading books, yoga, sleep, rest, day dream, talk to cloud, watch the leaves, see the sky, play music, enjoy own hobby, whatever for personal happiness and personal growth. If somebody still love to indulge more in farm works for experiencing, we can arrange too :-D.
4pm- prepare dinner
5.30pm dinner and rest
Usually, if there is no special events or farm emergency, we will visit Saturday evening market in the town and enjoy some local food there.
Most of the activities are for learning and experiences. Time table will be changed according to weather and situation, please be flexible to adapt. We choose one day per week as holiday, normally it is Saturday.
***Individual preference, inner attitude and personal growth are something the farm owners really value. So you are free to follow farm tasks or spend your own personal time as long as not going against farm guide lines. We encourage you to join morning farm volunteering work because it is the best way for farm experience and learning. However, whether having volunteer or not, for us, we are still performing our same task, we don't change our farm task because there is volunteer or no. The most important thing for us are, everyone understanding concept of fair share, perform quality of community living, respect each other, having kind and humble attitude, to not creating any burden/problem for farm owners, so that we can enjoy simple farm life together.
Financial Contribution: 4000 baht for 10 nights per person, and 400 baht per night for the following nights. We encourage people to stay at least 10 nights in our farm for better experience and learning. If you stay only 9 nights or less, we collect 4000 baht too.
Your money will be used for organic food production in our farm expenses such as buying buffalo or cow manure from the locals, gardening tools, soil rebuilding, kitchen facilities, spring water system management, solar power system maintenance, transportation fuel, natural building maintenance, fee to hire locals to join our projects, expenses on free permaculture education for local village kids and farmers, quality healthy ingredients in our kitchen such as good oil, good salt, good sauce, and etc.
What To Bring
Volunteers are encouraged to bring the following items:
Flashlight or headlamp (very encouraged)
Bath towel (must bring)
100% organic soap and shampoo(can get from farm)
Sensible clothing for gardening like long sleeve and long pants.
Sun hat
Sandals and work shoes
Insect repellent (optional)
Tissue paper and tissue paper receptacle (optional)
Notebook and writing utensils (optional)
Personal medicine, small first aid kit (optional)
Camping tent if you love camping
Rechargable fan for your own comfort (optional)
About Insurance: We ask everyone to get an appropriate travel insurance by themselves, that covers volunteering in Thailand in case of any incidents.
Our family is trying to reduce unnecessary waste in our life, especially plastic and polystyrene. If you bring them here, please bring back with you.
We allow our kids to have any snack, but only after they finish their proper meal. If not sure, please ask their parents.
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Some special things to make us happier
We often get questioned on what else we need in the farm and what can people bring to us from the city. So here is the list that you can bring along if you like to see our happier smiling face.
1- Special Oil. We could not easily have access to buy GOOD oil in the town. Yet, nowadays we can order them from online shopping, or ask volunteers to bring for us when they come from big city. Example of oils that we are using everyday in our kitchen are organic cold press coconut oil, organic olive oil, pumpkin oil, cold press sesame oil, avocado oil, organic red palm oil….
2- Some powders or flours such as chickpea (garbanzo) flour, cocoa powder, whole wheat flour, rye etc.
3- Some cooking spices such as curry powder, cinnamon powder, chai tea spices, oregano, rosemary, cumin seeds, or anything you like to try or like to let us try!
4- Some permaculture books or children books in English, Chinese, or Thai.
5- Some hairloom seeds or things for planting because we love planting. Currently we are looking very much for asparagus, bread fruit seed, curry plant, raspberry plants, pakistan mulberry (long mulberry), ayapana, or seeds of any perrenial plants.
6- Sea salt eg. French Celtic Seasalt. Any salt is welcome as long as it is not sodium chloride table salt.
See you soon in the wild!
Volunteer Application Form
Complete and submit the form below, or send application direct to sahainan@gmail.com.