Farmstay And Volunteering

Volunteer With Us!

As a volunteer at Sahainan, you’ll receive a unique hands-on learning experience on a wide range of projects, such as:

• Planting trees

• Making compost and tilling soil

• Planting fruits, herbs, vegetables, coffee and rice paddies

• Natural water filtration

• Maintaining seed nurseries

• Harvesting

• Food storage and preparation, rice dehusking

• Cooking

• Working with hand-tools to build houses and furniture using locally-sourced wood, bamboo and mud

• Community outreach and permaculture education

• And many more!

Volunteers are welcome to stay and work on the farm as long as they want. Interested in volunteering long-term? Check out our 80 Days Volunteering Program and 80 Days Carpentry Internship & Volunteering Program.

We also accept and welcome individual or groups who come for educational internship.

What We Provide

Accommodation: We have huts made of bamboo, mud, or teak wood. We provide mosquito nets, mattress, and blanket. You are encourage to bring your own bed sheets. If you prefer to sleep in a tent, there’s plenty of good camping spots scattered around the farm.

Food: we cook on fire stove with firewood collected in the farm. Organic brown rice and vegetarian or vegan food will be prepared depending on harvest of the day. When needed, we buy some stuff from the local market to support the organic planting community. We can prepare for special diet such as gluten-free. We do not use any aluminum pot or wok for cooking, we use stainless steels utensils, coconut bowls, bamboo spoons and bamboo chopsticks. Students and volunteers are encouraged to contribute in cooking when they are available.

Electricity: we generate electricity from solar panels. Please bring your own charger.

Toilet and Shower: We have successful self-composting toilets (hassle-free, odorless, you will not see others poop in the toilet) and showers, you need to bring your own towels, and tissue paper (if you need). We allow only organic soap which is free from SLS, Paraben or any other harmful chemicals. You can buy organic soap in our farm (100 Baht to 350 Baht).

Internet: Free WiFi is available at coffee shops and restaurants about a 5 minutes motorbike ride (25 minutes walk) from the farm. You can also use internet access form your phone with a Thai sim card. Cellphone reception on the farm is good, but only for Thai cellphone services like True, AIS and DTAC, and signal from True is the best in our farm so far.

Water: we are blessed to have spring water from mountain about 1km away from our farm for using. This springs water from forest is quite safe to drink straight from the tap, but we still have our water filter system to make our water even cleaner.

Laundry: we wash our laundry with water and soap in the bucket. There is laundry service in the town (6km away) if you need.

Weather: Please check the weather forecast in Thung Chang, from November to March the temperature can be as low as 5’C in some night, we provide blanket but please also prepare suitable clothing such as warm jacket. From March to June can be quite hot in the afternoon like 38’C in some day. From June to October is the raining season, this is the time when we do most of the planting, so it is perfect for those who love to learn and experience planting with us especially rice planting. Unlike other part of northern Thailand, we do not have the problem of big burning and heavy smoke in Thung Chang since we are staying here.

Yoga & Meditation: we have a little huts on the hill that you can enjoy sunrise. This hut is nice for yoga and meditation, but it can only fit about three yogi at the same time. However, extending this building to have more space is in our plan!

Transport: Our farm is 3km from the main road, around 25 minutes by walking. If you need to go to town, you can follow our car whenever we are going. We have no service taxi here, but we have two motorbikes that we can rent you for 100 Bath per day, to support these motorbike yearly taxes and the maintenance fee.

Nearby touristic places: We are very near to Nan River in Huay Phan Village, the river is crystal clear when there is no rain around the mountains. The kids in the village swim and play in the river every afternoon. Jungle trekking are offered by the villagers in Huay Phan Village, they can guide you for forest foraging and waterfall, you can also request to stay one or two nights in the forest with them, the price is about 1000Baht per person for one night. There are also other waterfall like “Taat Man Waterfall” 45 minutes drive from our farm. Whereas our friend “Sisawalai” owns a local traditional handmade cotton and silk factory, she has her own farm beside her factory planting organic cotton, plants to extract natural dyes, teak wood trees and bamboos to make the weaving machine. If you are lucky, you can join her for dyeing the cloth, weaving, or foraging in her food forest! All her weaving are exported to Japan or sent to Chiang Mai and Bangkok, but if you buy directly from her with factory price, you save so much than buying in the big city!

Everything else—the beautiful mountain scenery, the new friendships, the simple lifestyle and the limitless opportunities for education and personal growth—is all part of the experience!

Financial Contribution: 200 baht per night per person. We encourage people to stay at least five nights in our farm for better experience and learning. If you stay only 3 nights or less, we collect 300 baht per night per person. If you stay 4 or 5 nights, we collect a total of 1000 baht per person.

Your money will be used for organic food production in our farm expenses such as buying buffalo or cow manure from the locals, gardening tools, soil rebuilding, kitchen facilities, spring water system management, solar power system maintenance, transportation fuel, natural building maintenance, fee to hire locals to join our projects, expenses on free permaculture education for local village kids and farmers, and etc.
We do not sell any product for now because we share all the harvest to our guests, volunteers, neighbor, and the locals.

Daily volunteers activity:

6am-7am harvesting, prepare breakfast and activities (take turn)

7am-8am breakfast

8am-10.30am morning outdoor activities

10.30am – 12pm prepare lunch

12pm-2.30pm lunch and siesta

2.30pm-4pm afternoon activities

4pm – 5.30pm prepare dinner

5.30pm dinner and rest

Most of the activities are for learning and experiences. Time table will be changed according to weather and situation, please be flexible to adapt. We choose one day per week as holiday, normally it is Saturday.

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What To Bring

Volunteers are encouraged to bring the following items:

• Notebook and writing utensils

• Flashlight or headlamp

• 100% organic soap and shampoo

• Sensible clothing for gardening like long sleeve and long pants.

• Sun hat

• Bath towel

• Tissue paper and tissue paper receptacle (optional)

• Personal medicine

• Small first aid kit

• Sandals and work shoes

• Bed sheeth

About Insurance: We ask volunteers to get a appropriate travel insurance by themselves, that covers volunteering in Thailand in case of any incidents.

Some special things to make us happier

We often get asked on what else we need in the farm and what can people bring to us from the city. So here is the list that you can bring along if you like to see our happier smiling face.

1-  Olive oil. We could not buy any olive oil in the town. Yet, our volunteers love to put it on many recipes especially pizza, pasta, and salad dressing.

2-  Some powders or flours such as chickpea (garbanzo) flour, cocoa powder, whole wheat flour, etc.

3-  Some cooking spices such as curry powder, cinnamon powder, chai tea spices, bay leaves, oregano, rosemary, cumin seeds, or anything you like to try or like to let us try!

4-  Some permaculture books or children books in English, Chinese, or Thai.

5-  Some hairloom seeds or things for planting because we love planting. Currently we are looking very much for zucchini seed, artichoke, asparagus, bread fruit seed, curry plant, durian seeds, raspberry plants, or seeds of any perrenial plants.

 

If you are interested to stay with us, please send email to us at sahainan@gmail.com. Thankyou.