By: HG Gunaavatar Das
Like previous years, the farmers at Yasodapura Eco Village worked together in this year farming season. They planted rice and removed the weeds from the corn and cassava fields.
They usually they work in a group of about 5-10 people or more. Forming such groups, they go to each one’s farm. This way it takes just about a few months. Thus, the work gets over in just the half of the farming season. This is one of the beauty of Cambodian villages. It depicts the importance of joint family. Joint family forms the basis of village life, where people do not need a big budget. People work for free for their family and relatives. Here in farming we do not use chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Therefore, the farmers need to work harder with the cleaning of weeds. Farming is a labour-intensive activity and joint family structure helps in this. The farmers also work nicely because they work with their family.
We cleaned some bush areas to plant jack fruits and bananas. We decided to keep some trees so that later on in dry season they can protect our plants from the scorching sun. We will plant 150 baby jack fruit trees from our nursery, on this month.
Recently, villagers spent a day working together to build the bridge to our farm, they collected some wood from the village and put them nicely on top of the small river, and they also opened and cleaned up the road going to the farm and to Yasodapura Eco Village.
