Nicholas Eager

Working on a Permaculture Farm on A Tiny Indonesian Island

Understanding the methods behind permaculture, learning about all sorts of tropical plants, and helping take down the monoculture industry. - 28 April 2018


bamboo house on a farm

After traveling across an international border by sea for the first time, I arrived on a small island in the Northern parts of Indonesia. One of the folks I was going to be working with picked me up at the ferry port. He was in an old police crowd control vehicle, painted all black with metal cages on the outside to protect the windows and lights from shattering. We drove through the jungles of the island, and through a large palm oil plantation, until we nally reached the farm.

I was astonished when I found the house I would be living in for the next month. It was a two-story, open, thatched roof structure. The kitchen and sitting area was on the first floor. We slept upstairs on mattresses covered in mosquito nets. The bathroom was a separate, and consisted of a toilet and shower where the waste ran off into a plant and cat fish filled pond for a septic tank. The shower was constructed of a hole-filled piece of bamboo. The water pressure was attained by gravitational means, with a water reservoir located up the hill. The water reservoir was filled from a solar-powered water pump, which gathered the water from a groundwater source behind the house. The house was located immediately adjacent to the farm.

Papayas, mangoes, bananas, cashew, jackfruit, cassava, tumeric, ginger, and coconuts were just some of the plants they were growing on the farm. Even though the farm was in its early stages, there was such a diversity, with all of the plants growing at an incredible rate.

Some of the main jobs on the farm were planting, weeding, watering, digging, filling nursery poly bags, and usual gardening work. However, because I had a little knowledge in construction work, they wanted me to help out with building various projects. With my new nickname “Bob the Builder,” I built a table and benches, multiple sets of shelves, a cabinet, and a watershed. Everyone wanted to learn a bit about construction, so I helped teach proper tool use, principles of inertial moments for creating sturdy structures (I wanted to sound smart), and planning dimensions and materials needed for a project.

The owner of the farm also hired local workers, who were as kind as can be, but spoke little to no English. Communicating with them while working was always a treat. I learned many Indonesian words, but we mainly used body language, hand signals, and pointing.

The food we ate consisted of rice, vegetables, fish, any fruit we could find on the farm, or food bought at a local market. They were fabulous cooks, and spiced things up a bit, literally. The food here was, at times, as spicy as Nepalese food. They really love their chilis here.

With quite a bit of downtime in the evenings, I set myself to learning permaculture with the help of a small library of books. I read about the background, theory, and application of permaculture techniques. I developed an interest in permaculture that I would love to pursue one day.