Southern Oil Palm and Rubber Plantations - Ajarn Forum

LeedsLeedsLeeds · 17th July 2008, 11:24

Due to the favourable response to my plantation photos on the 'Posters Pics' thread I'm going to give you all a tour of my plantations. Five years ago I got the idea in my head to get out of teaching, so I asked my in-laws to keep an eye out for some land and finally after a year of waiting a plot of about 100 rai became available for a very reasonable price. 40 for me and 60 for the in-laws (to be split amongst their children as an inheritance). The in-laws were, at first, reluctant to let me get too involved as they were worried that locals might try to take advantage of me but their fears were unfounded and we all spent two years working weekends in order to establish palm plantations. This was fairly difficult as both The Wife and I were teachers and the in-laws had their wholesale business to run but we learned a lot by working seven days a week for those two years.

Our typical daily routine involved getting up at dawn, driving an hour up the highway, then working until dusk. Here's day one, cutting down the banana plants that covered most of the land:

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos but these were in the pre-digital days when film still ruled (still does for me but I have to move with the times). Here we have a newly planted palm tree and it is possible to see the little wire cage that we had to use in order to stop the rats eating the trees. The core (or 'head') of the oil palm is sweet and nutritious and we lost a lot of trees to rats:

Half of my plantation is on a slope and the palm trees are hardly visible at this point:

This is the view of the other half of my plantation, the whole area is surrounded by a kind of horse-shoe of limestone mountains so we have privacy up here as this is the end of the road:

Here's the cute wee hut that we had built for us and the mature trees on part of the in-laws plantation. Our hut cost us the princely sum of 4,000 baht and was a lovely little place while it lasted as we often went camping up there, cooking food on an open fire and drinking whisky. Sadly the termites have destroyed it now:

As you can see it really was a very comfortable resting place but the mosquitos were an ever-present annoyance:

Further down the hill we have part of the in-laws plantation and a great view:

Here is where we washed every week for two years, it is a beautiful spot and we had hoped to build a house here but the area is just too remote:

I hope that you enjoyed this glimpse into my life down here in the wonderfully lush and fertile province of Surat Thani.

zehner · 17th July 2008, 11:32

good stuff

samsara · 17th July 2008, 11:45

awesome, leeds. how many total rai do you run now?

jimbo · 17th July 2008, 11:47

Absolutely sweet. More, more more.

migrant · 17th July 2008, 11:49

Nice pics, and interesting!!

I, for one, would enjoy hearing, and seeing, more.

Thanks!

natalie8 · 17th July 2008, 11:55

Damn, the pics aren't showing for me. I need to get another vpn.

Aquaman · 17th July 2008, 12:40

Keep this stuff coming. cool plot of land you got there!

jonny danger · 17th July 2008, 15:18

Showem the one where you're taking a bath in mosquito repellent.

Umbuku · 17th July 2008, 15:36

Nice shots LLL.

How about the palms?

Growth rate? Oil yield per rai? Stages of development? Problems faced there in?

LeedsLeedsLeeds · 17th July 2008, 15:56

Thanks for all of your postive comments and questions, I am more than happy to share the limited knowledge that I have gained.

Quote:

Originally Posted by samsara

how many total rai do you run now?

The plantation in the photos is 20 rai on the slope and 20 rai on the flat. The plantation with the large trees in the bungalow photo will be passed on to The Wife in a year or two and that's another 20 rai. We also have 15 rai in a different area (photos coming soon) so we have 75 rai altogether.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonny danger

Showem the one where you're taking a bath in mosquito repellent.

Sorry to disappoint you Jonny but photobucket deleted those - inappropriate content.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Umbuku

Growth rate? Oil yield per rai? Stages of development? Problems faced there in?

The growth rate is really quite phenomenal, after 2.5 years the trees started producing and I was only getting a few hundred kgs per month. Now a year and a half later I'm getting four tonnes per month and it was fascinating to see the yield increase steadily every month. The yield will continue to increase for another two years to an average of about 500 kgs (depending on species, soil conditions and general care-taking) per rai for the next twenty years. At the age of about 25+ years the yield will decrease and the trees will eventually stop producing and die.

As for the problems faced so far the biggest has been with rats eating and destroying our young trees. A couple of dozen trees had to be replaced on this plantation and on my other plantation we lost 200 out of 400 palm trees but I'll mention the main factors when I post up those photos.

jimbo · 17th July 2008, 16:02

So,..how much can you pay me per month to be your resident rat hunter?

natalie8 · 17th July 2008, 16:05

I can see the pics now, from the gym. Great stuff, LLL.

Umbuku · 17th July 2008, 16:08

What's the going rate on a kilo of palm oil?

russellsimpson · 17th July 2008, 16:11

Nice pics.

I used to visit a number of plantations in that general area.

Beautiful indeed eccept for the scorpions, snakes and those big black hairy spiders that live in large holes in the ground. Don't know that I could ever get comfortable on a rural site like that, just because of these horrible creatures.

But does look lovely.

LeedsLeedsLeeds · 17th July 2008, 16:14

At the moment it is 6.10 baht per kilo but when we started out it was 1.95 baht per kilo and I really hope that the rate doesn't sink that low again. Even if it does I'll still be making good money and especially if fellow planters start getting nervous about meeting their monthly Fortuner payments and are forced to sell their land on the cheap.

Thanks Russ, you're down in Songkhla province, aren't you? Generally speaking snakes retreat, tarantulas stay in their burrows and scorpions hide under rocks when large mammals approach them. What concerns me the most is the giant centipedes, now those are truly nasty creatures that don't know how to surrender.