Tiny House Presentation at EM Workshop, Saraburi Thailand

In February while visiting Thailand my farm partner Clasina suggested we go to an organic farming workshop on effective microorganism technology or EM as it is called. EM technology was the game changing piece I had implemented for my composting toilet poop processing. This was the method that had allowed me to dispense with the required dedicated outdoor humanure composting bin and instead bury my fermented poop directly into the garden. I had been doing this successfully for two years now so I was eager to share my experience with this professional EM workshop being given at the International Kyusei Nature Farming Center in Saraburi just an hour and a half from Bangkok.

This university level facility with its modern buildings and extensive campus included a working farm. Clasina was particularly impressed by the sparkling clean bathrooms. The program was created in collaboration with the Japanese EM industry (so they would not be teaching us how to make EM ourselves, just how to use it as much as possible so they could sell product). Indeed the Japanese EM technology was being quietly introduced to all of Asia through such outreach while being offered to the public through spas, hotels and wellness centers with EM fertilized organic food, lush gardens and EM disinfectants and cleaners. It was through such a wellness center in Hawaii that a friend had heard about it. The same friend who insisted that I trade out my traditional composting toilet method for this superior (and faster) EM technology. Instead of waiting a year to season a humanure composting pile, the EM process only took 2 to 3 weeks to reach a pathogen free state.

EM was a disinfectant we learned. It was spritzed into the air daily to fell harmful bacteria. It was made into non-toxic household cleaners and hand sanitizers. From the first day we were given our choice to use EM hand sanitizer or the usual alcohol based ones to fend off the virus.

The center was part of the Asia Pacific Natural Agricultural Network and our workshop was attended by a huge group from Malaysia, but also Myanmar and Japan along with one other woman from South Africa and me the lone representative of the U.S. Lectures were given in English with detailed powerpoint presentations in the air conditioned fully technical lecture hall. In the afternoons we boarded a people carrier much like a an amusement park train to tour the working farm. Students showed us how mushrooms were cultivated and served vegetable roll snacks. We saw how biochar was infused with EM to make a more potent fertilizer. We toured the lush fields of vegetables and the chicken and pig houses. I was bowled over by the use of EM technology in animal husbandry. There was no odor at all not even in the pig pens. 

EM was also added to the animal feed as a probiotic supplement. The EM infused feed kept them healthier and they grew bigger than with conventional methods. Every time their pens were sluiced down the pigs came running to slurp up the EM infused waster. Their waste was washed away into large concrete pits where the mixture became fertilizer (just as my own poop did inside my three gallon bucket). Imagine such a solution putting an end to those problematic lagoons of manure that stink for miles and sometimes blow up like a geyser or overflow into waterways choking fish with algae blooms. EM worked in the same way I understood my composting toilet to work. The effective microorganisms ate all the harmful bacteria and were then eaten themselves in a probiotic fermenting process that ate up all the pathogens. This process was given the Japanese word bokashi. “Bokashi!” we shouted in every group photo.

We also saw how food scraps were treated with EM in 50 gallon drums from which the liquid was collected for use as a plant feed. This you can do at home too in smaller buckets. Hands-on demonstrations had us shoveling and mixing together ingredients so the EM infused bran could ferment the compost. The following day we returned to find that the piles were so hot they would turn our hands red and I wondered aloud if I could heat my tiny house with such piles or at least heat water. For fisheries EM could be made into softball size balls and thrown into the ponds to keep them clean. We had great fun seeing how far we could throw when we were all offered a turn. The EM balls reduced sludge at the bottom and had other applications including the clean up of latrines. In shrimp farming the shrimp poop is food for the microorganisms so EM made the water clear and cut down the stench. The meat of cows raised with EM technology was lower in fat and higher in vitamins.

We concluded our workshop with a visit to a recycling plant in Bangkok. Here the use of EM cut down on the biggest neighborhood complaint—the smell. Plus they were able to make toilet cleaner and dishwashing products from fermented rice water and other captured waste products. No harsh chemicals were used at all in this recycling and green waste processing. EM technology had also been introduced to the Thai military and was adopted as a method for large scale clean-ups. In the city it was offered as a drain cleaner in one of my friends apartment building. All of these projects had support from the Thai government which gave grants for outreach into the community to teach people how to make organic fertilizer from their kitchen waste. And because the late King Bhumipol had long been an advocate of a self sufficient economy and had been voicing his concerns about global warming since 1989, the reduction of carbon in the air through the use of EM technology and the concept of zero waste was considered a project of the King. This had enormous appeal for the Thais giving them not only a shared mission, but a way to further implement the King’s legacy for the good of the country.

In the evenings of our 4 day workshop participants representing EM companies made their presentations touting the benefits of their product while farmers showed their agricultural projects. I gave my tiny house presentation on the second night. I had rehearsed all my jokes and had enough pictures to show the whole tiny house trend to an audience unfamiliar with this American phenomena and its California origin.

I also explained about the composting toilet being a key feature of most tiny houses. They loved it. Having sufficiently explained why such a house needed to process their own waste, they had no questions about my EM methods so I was clearly doing it right. But the look of incredulity on the face of a Japanese woman who represented a health supplement company told me how out there I was. When I told them that in the course of a year I had buried 11 buckets of my EM composted waste they applauded. I have no idea why this single fact garnered such appreciation.

None of these professional EM distributors had thought of using EM technology in such an application. They did not know about the pet waste disposal system I was able to purchase in the States and asked how much I had paid for the kit. ($100). Like any other first world society it had never occurred to them to dispense with the flush toilet. Nor were they about to. Some teased me about it later, but I was happy that I had earned my place in the EM technological revolution. It was by far the most fun presentation I had yet given on any topic. 

Posted May 24th. Back dated to preserve timeline.

Talking Tiny In Thailand

The first thing I realized about giving a talk about tiny houses in Thai was that there is no word for trailer. They are simply not widely used in Thailand. If you want to haul something you have an array of trucks to choose from, but none of them are equipped to pull a trailer. An expat living in Thailand told me that if you want one say for a boat you have to have it custom built.

The occasion of this talk was a presentation I offered to give at the women's adobe building workshop I attend annually in Northern Thailand. And as the building instruction was given in both Thai and English to accommodate the Thai women attending as well as our mud hut sisters from Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Europe, Australia and North America I opted to give my talk in both Thai and English rather than have it translated by one of the instructors. This also served to keep my talk short I explained since my Thai was not as proficient as my English. Luckily I had plenty of pictures to use in my power point to show what I couldn't manage to describe. But no picture of a trailer so in the end I called the tiny house a car house. A house built with wheels like a vehicle.

To give my story context I opened the talk by showing pictures of houses in the Bay Area and talking about how very expensive they were, all of them a million dollars or more. And how much rents were. So post divorce I knew I could not find housing in my budget so had opted to buy a tiny house on wheels. The picture of said tiny house evoked a round of "aww" at how cute it was. Then I explained how I needed a place to build the interior and had had to ask my stepmother, who was living in the house of my deceased father, if I could bring it to what was now her house to work on it. In my Thai translation this part of the story took up a lot of space and I later realized I was telling my story of how a high born Thai person such as I was managed to become nearly homeless, but by virtue of my building skills had averted such an outcome. The fee for the other Thai women for the course was half what it was for foreigners. (Some had their fee waived altogether.) This allowed for women of all classes to attend including a woman from a hilltribe village and a lesbian couple from Northeastern Thailand. Two cousins living in Bangkok had family land they wanted to turn into a permaculture food forest and a third had been offered land to farm that belonged to a friend. They were curious as to why I kept repeating this course. The concept of finding one's tribe was not a quest for them as it was for me. Thai people are much more rooted in family and childhood friends.

They were also accustomed to living in small houses or living communally so the experience of moving into a tiny house was not nearly as compelling a story as it is for Americans. In fact I didn't even call it a "tiny" house. But to show the size of it I arranged the tables in the hall to outline the floor space. This also gave the presentation a special stage set. Nor was the off-grid aspect of it unusual. Because of the many street food vendors Thai people are very familiar with using chest freezers for keeping food cool as I do.

But most of the country now has flush toilets and septic systems so everybody was interested in the off grid composting toilet aspect of tiny house living. And as builders of houses made from mud and straw they were interested in the details. We were after all staying on a farm commune that was off grid where the flush toilets drained into a pit where the contents sat composting. And the toilet we used at the building site was just a board laid across a pit. So no one was squeamish about a homemade system. Nor was the concept of Bokashi composting new to them. In fact one of the families that lived on the farm was so enamored of the technique that they had named their daughter Bokashi. Still not even the instructors of the workshop had used Bokashi composting to dispose of poop. And this had prompted me to offer to make my presentation in the first place.

I also wanted them to know how hard it was to find a place to park the "car house" and how draconian the laws are in the states about housing size. I gave lots of information about how much things cost too since that is a universal measurement especially in Asia. Best of all my presentation made them all laugh throughout because I used a lot of pantomime to make up for my lack of words. And there are some words in Thai that really convey a sense of comfort and ease that resonated with my Thai audience, while my Western audience marveled at the minimalist aspects of it. It was one of the most fun presentations I've given.

(This post has been backdated to keep a record of the timeline. Actual date of writing is 12/23/18).