ABOUT DARUMA ECO FARM

The purpose of Daruma is to provide an ecologically engineered learning facility for life-long learning activities.

Find out more about our permaculture courses in Thailand here.

Daruma Eco-Farm Way Back When

The land way back when.  Click to enlarge image.

Daruma Eco-Farm in 2018

Daruma Eco-Farm in 2018. Click to enlarge image.

Life Long Learning

Daruma Eco-farm is a 4 rai owned (one rai is 1600 square meters) learning center. The farm is not a commercial farm meaning that the main purpose is not to produce food or animal products for sale. Rather the purpose of Daruma is to provide an ecologically engineered learning facility for life-long learning activities.

Part of this does require that the farm does produce some food and animal products. These are either eaten or used by our family, staff, students or volunteers and/or shared or sold to the community. Even when we find something we can produce and sell to the community, the production process including the economic aspects of the production are valuable far more for the learning outcomes produced than the profit produced.

A Permaculture Project

Daruma is a sustainable permaculture project located in Bang Phra, Thailand. We offer permaculture design courses, our volunteer program called HELP, residency programs, and are an active member of WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming), Couchsurfing, and WarmShowers. Volunteers coming to Daruma Eco-Farm can expect to work on anything from planting rice paddies to sustainable construction to assisting our on-site alternative learning school, Mosaic.

There are always different projects going on, depending on the season. We are not a commercial farm. Our project is for pleasure, recreation, health, and learning. We do hope our endeavors might one day earn money but only in a not-for-profit manner. We are most interested in harvesting organic fruits, vegetables and beans that are used in our Vimaya Spa products.

Integrated Systems

At the moment, our gardens do not produce enough to supply both our spa and family, so most of our food items need to be purchased from the market. Our farm is currently comprised of mango, banana and other fruit trees along with interspersed rice, vegetable and herb gardens. We have a large fish pond used for aquaculture, chickens providing fresh eggs, fertilizer and meat, and ducks providing natural fertilizer for the rice paddies (which also feeds the catfish).

Resident animals include several cats, a dog, chickens, sheep, ducks, and pigs. The farm utilizes integrated aquaculture and rice paddies are planted according to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). The farm is bound by a mango orchard, mahogany tree farm and cassava farm and has views of the hills nearby. Many construction projects are happening on the farm at all times, from a rock path to an extension on a current building.

Philosophy

The name of our farm comes from the Japanese daruma doll which is a symbol of perseverance and good luck. The daruma doll is modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect of Buddhism. Daruma Eco-Farm is inspired by the principles of permaculture as laid out by its founders, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. The three primary ethics of permaculture are Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. More on permaculture here.

Location

Located just an hour from Bangkok Airport (BKK), on the Gulf of Thailand’s Eastern Seaboard, Daruma has a great location.  You can find out more here on the contact page for our permaculture & natural building courses.

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