VISITOR and CUSTOMER COMMENTS

Kenny’s Organic Farm
Date: Feb 2008

The writer is Su Win. She and her husband, Philip Leong who is a popular lawyer in Ipoh and Tapah, have been staying near an Asli village for ten years. They are like a “Penghulu” in the village, helping and taking care of the folks well. They are well respected even by the nearby village folks.

I was very happy when I heard that Kenny was going to buy the piece of land down the road from us to do organic farming. Great, I thought. With fresh vegetables, and organic at that, at my doorstep, and food in my freezer, I do not need to go to market so often.

Kenny’s land was covered by secondary forest which had to be cleared before anything can be planted. Once the formalities were done, Kenny rented a place in Kampar, built a store and composting sheds and started coming every day to clear the land himself.

Then he identified a spot for the house, got in contractors to build it and moved in once the house was completed in two months. In the meantime, he hired a few Orang Asli workers from the neighbouring villages as farm hands and started laying pipes for the house and sprinklers and watering pipes for his vegetable plots.

If you are staying in town, all you need to do is turn on the tap for water. Here we do not get piped water so getting water takes a much bigger effort. In Kenny’s case, he had to draw his water from the river behind our house. So he had to literally drag several 100 meters of pipe up the hill and then drag them down again across my land, along a stretch of road to his house. When it rains heavily, and if the intake gets clogged, we do not get water until workers can go up to clear the intake.

Kenny also got bunds made, manually and slowly and started planting bananas, chilli padi and ‘serai’ and ‘serai wangi.’ The leaves of the ‘serai’ are to be used for mulching and are planted around the borders of the bunds.
With the bunds in place, Kenny started experimenting with crops. I was a very happy and grateful ‘guinea pig’. We started getting peanuts, French beans, maize and I looked forward to getting leafy vegetables.

But one day a friend of his came and laughed at the way he was making his bunds. The friend correctly said that he was doing it the ‘kampong style’ and it will take him ages to realize anything. Kenny thought about it and decided that what his friend said made sense. So he called in the heavy machinery.

I was thus shocked when I drove by one morning to see his land denuded of trees and vegetation. But the machines did their work. His land also had a lot of rocks and these were dug up and all pushed to one huge pile.

After the bunds were quickly and efficiently made with machines, he started building sheds to protect the vegetables. Now Kenny’s place really looks like a well-run organic farm instead of a little ‘kampong’ garden in the middle of a jungle.

Kenny’s farm now produces various vegetables regularly which he supplies directly to customers and organic food outlets.

I am of course very fortunate. I think very few of his customers can get their vegetables fresher than I do. Whenever I am out of greens, I just drive over, harvest what I want if Kenny and his workers are not there, weigh them, sms Kenny what and how much I have taken and come home and cook them. You cannot get greens any fresher and believe me, they taste really really good.

I have a lot of respect admiration for people like Kenny. He was running a profitable company, living comfortably with his family in Penang. But he had a dream and a wish to make a difference. So he gave up his company, put some money aside for his children’s education, left them in Penang and started a farm. Kenny does not stand aside and give orders, but he works together with and harder than his workers.

Will he make enough from his farm to make a profit? No way! He will be very lucky if he even manages to recoup what he has put in.

How many of us are able or willing to give up everything and go after a dream?

Kenny did.

Here is a diary of activities written by 3 boys who stayed on the farm for 5 days in November 2007
Edited by: Weewynn (12 yr old boy)
Ideas from: Wee Shen (13 yr old boy)
Helped by: Wee Jie (14 yr old boy)Day 1
Sunday (25-11-07)
- Harvested potatoes
- Weight potatoes and radish
- Packed the potatoes and the radish
- Had dinner in Chenderiang town
- Bought a pair of boots and sausages (sausages for breakfast)
The end of Sundayharvest potato
Harvesting sweet potatoesDay 2
Monday (26-11-07)
- Ate sausages and eggs for breakfast
- Harvested Okras and Lettuce
- Went to Ipoh
- Delivered vegetables to uncle Kenny’s friends
- Met uncle Kenny’s friend
- Talked for a long time (boring)
- Went for lunch
- Went back to the farm
- Took a rest
- Supposed to cut lalang but it rained
- Made a box
- Planted vegetables in the box
- Weewynn broke a bottle of BBQ sauce by accident
- Ate fried rice for dinner
End of MondayDay 3
Tuesday (27-11-07)
- Ate the same thing for breakfast
- Cut the lalang
- Covered the soil with lalang to avoid weeds from growing, to retain moisture and rain erosion
- We went to tie strings for the long beans so that the long beans can follow the string up
- Saw a spider egg and, crushed it
- Went back
- Ate lunch at Chenderiang town
- Came back and uncle Kenny went out by himself
- We went to hike up the stream
- Rocky the dog followed us
- Noticed that we hiked to the highway (WOW)
- Came back through the ‘orang asli’ village
- They followed us to a lake and turned back (unfriendly)
- Went back to the farm
- Found out that leeches was sucking blood from Wee Shen and Weewynn
- Got some salt to kill the leeches
- Wee Jie burned the leeches with a lighter
- Took a rest
- Cut the weeds beside the house for composing (weeding)
- Ate instant noodles with eggs, soup, vegetables and meat (not bad)
End of TuesdayDay 4
Wednesday (28-11-07)
- Ate biscuits for breakfast
- Went weeding the soil for planting maize
- Went to the stream to wash up
- Went to Tapah to deliver vegetables
- Ate banana leaf rice for lunch (delicious and spicy)
- Went to a Cyber Cafe for a while to check mail
- Went to a mini market to buy things (bought wrong coffee….)
- Went back to the farm
- Uncle Kenny went out again
- We went hiking up the stream again (without Rocky)
- Went underneath the highway through a drain (walked very quickly)
- Wee Shen hit his head cause the drain was very small
- Went back (no leech this time)
- Tried to build a dam (failed…)
- Went to the neighbor (uncle Philip’s) house to swim in a river near by (saw a naked boy at the river)
- We swam there (so boring)
- Walked back to the farm
- Went to Chenderiang town again to have dinner
- Went to order the food
- The cook and the waiter quarreled while we were ordering
- An old China man pushed Weewynn and stared at him
- The old lady talked so much and all her saliva flew into the food (disgusting)
- Went back
- Discussed what to write on this farm story (in the car)
- Writing this farm note (waited for the future to come…)
End of WednesdayDay 5 (last)
Thursday (29-11-07)
- Woke up late
- Ate eggs and bread (eggs were a little burned)
- Went to loosen the soil
- After loosening the soil we covered it with 3 layers of organic fertilizer, they were composted soil, smoked rice husks and IMO soil
- While we were working uncle Kenny’s family came
- We went to the stream to wash up
- Went back to our room, played games and packed up our stuff ready to leave
- Had lunch with Uncle’s family (actually a different table…)
- Got ink for the printer (noticed that it was empty)
- Uncle Kenny’s wife injected black ink into the cartridge
- Continued to write this farm note
- Packed up the mattress
- Waited for Weewynn’s father to come pick us up
- Don’t know what happened…
The End