Oberon resident Kay Jones, who is travelling overseas, has been sharing her experiences with Oberon Review readers.
Na took me down to her rice farm yesterday where she grows a crop of “sticky rice”. She has a large bamboo house built on stilts, with many scrawny chickens running around. Her youngest son Joe raises these chickens and sells them them for cock fighting.
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Na’s oldest son is away in Bangkok, studying engineering at university. Na has sacrificed everything to give both her sons an education and a future so that they don't continue the cycle and become poor farmers.
Na manages the farm on her own. She has no help. She cannot afford to pay workers.
We walked through the bright green rice fields, down to the two dams, where she keeps chickens, ducks, turkeys and two water buffalo. The buffalo were shoulder deep in the dam and kept a watchful eye on us as we carefully picked our way down the track. Three black and white ducks flapped their wings and jumped into the water as we approached.
Hundreds of chickens and ducks were excitedly waiting for us to finally let them out.
Na returned with their food and they all ran to greet her. The ducks swam back to shore. Na left the bucket on the ground while she tended to the water buffalo.
After sorting out the water buffalo, Na shooed them away and distributed the food into their feeding containers where they helped themselves.
Na and I sat on the bamboo platform under the shade of some trees and she talked to me about her life on the farm. We eventually left the animals and returned to the farm house, picking some grass seeds on the way as a treat for the Australian budgies she keeps in a cage under the house.
For my last day in Wungdod Village, Na took me for a walk around the village. She wanted me to meet Aet, a lady who lives in the village and grows silk worms.
Aet spins and weaves the silk into material and then she makes the skirts that the ladies wear to the temple. The silk is woven into intricate patterns of greens and blues, blues and reds, purple and blues. The older village ladies wear the darker colours of reds and browns, though they are still beautifully patterned.
The silk worms are kept in large, flat, round baskets. Each morning Aet covers them with mulberry leaves that she picks from her garden. These leaves are food for the worms until they grow big enough and are ready to be transferred into another basket where they spin their cocoon and lay their eggs for the next generation of silk worms.
Aet learnt how to grow silk worms and spin and weave from her parents. Her designs are original, though they are still influenced by traditional designs.