We gotta be careful around the rice paddies

We are trespassing almost every time we do one of our runs and some of the best places for us to plot our runs are on agricultural land. This is because generally they will have motorbike paths leading around the jungle but yet be far enough away from an actual street that we are still out in nature.

There is one thing we are very careful about though and that is to make sure that we never damage anything while we are doing our runs. Rice paddies, despite what you might think you know, are quite delicate and a step in the wrong place can spell disaster for the farmer and for us.

I don't know a great deal about rice-farming other than what I have witnessed with my own eyes but I do know that careful control of water levels is absolutely essential to the growth of this cash crop. Generally speaking, and all the fields I have seen here locally, the "walls" of the various areas are simply patches of molded dirt aside from the major waterways that the farmers use to control where the water goes, and these little walls are generally large enough for us to walk on as they go around the little patches of rice.

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These areas here are relatively indestructible by design but there needs to be an easy way for the farmers to be able to flood the little patches as well as let the water out. Like I said, I don't know exactly how it works, I just know that this part of the process is very important.

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I was quite surprised to find out that this is generally how the water level is controlled, not with a piece of wood or a levy or anything fancy like that but just a pile of dirt where a bit is dug out when the water needs to be released, and placed back when the land needs to be flooded.

If one of our runners was to be careless or selfish, we could accidentally end up draining a field and destroying the crop. The farmer would likely notice this before it was all destroyed but this doesn't change the fact that this would be a really serious inconvenience for an already very hard-working man, and we don't want to make anyone's life more difficult.

Therefore, when we are going to trek out on some rice farmland, this is one of the only times that we have a special talk with everyone in attendance about staying away from the rice paddies and how despite how we normally operate in that our trail could go in any direction, it will NEVER go through a rice field.

Simply stepping on that land can kill or damage the crop and because we are using the land normally without permission, the last thing we want to do is piss off some honest hard-working farmers who for the most part, don't seem to mind that a bunch of mostly foreigners dressed in silly colors go running across their land.

We also pick up any trash that we see while we are trekkiing and while we normally don't make a big deal to point this out to the land owners, I think they notice. It's a bit of a give and take.

In the many years that we have been operating here in Chiang Mai, we have only had a handful of land owners who got upset with us being on their land, and only once did authorities get involved. The one time authorities were called the story had a good ending because once we had a chance to explain what our little group does and how we mean no harm, we invited the guy who was actually quite upset with us at the time to join us, and he did so. This was 4 years ago and now he is a regular attendee, learned to speak English by hanging out with us, and just a few years ago was elected as the GM of the men only group.

It's awesome how his first interaction with us was one of wanting us arrested and later on he became one of us and is now a dear friend to all of us.

The point here is that while we do use land without asking if is ok, we are very respectful of the land that we are using. We never destroy anything, we never take any fruit from the fields, we never leave any garbage behind, and we always clean up any garbage that we find while we are there. I think it is a win/win... don't you?

So if you ever see a bunch of mostly older people in silly outfits that are running across your land shouting "ON ON!" there is a better than average chance they are just Hashers, and maybe you should go and join them. At the least they are going to offer you a beer.

ON ON!