I have moved my website to a different hosting company and it now looks that the annoying pop-ups have stopped. I have also refined the themes available. The best are the ones with two side bars and drop down menus. ( ZodiacEmporium,Carrington and Hostingconsortium . However I quite like Aspire and Zinwave. In addition personnel posts are now not visble unless you are logged in to the site.
Busy fertilising the trees again today, Had 3 additional people helping. Weather still hot and humid but a bit more cloudy today making working conditions a bit more tolerable.
Wend to Udon yesterday and bought some more turf. Spent all day putting it down. Had enough of the Normal Grass but not enough of the Japanese grass for the side of the house. Will have to get some more next month. Was a good price 28 bahts for a square meter. Also bought some more Fertiliser today ( 2 tonnes) for the rubber trees. Will resume fertilising the first farm again tomorrow. I might go and help or stay at home and water the grass if it doesn’t rain in the night.
After major issues with unsolicited pop ups my website re-write is complete along with the two themes I have written. As I hoped there is more flexibility with using word press and the pages are far easier to write.The only downside is that I will have to ensure the web site is backed up to my PC at suitable intervals.
Started raining around Midnight and eased up about Midday. At sometimes in was torrential and the “house” next door got flooded. The Shop owner opposite also had a job to keep the water out. We also lost our baby telapia as the water level in the lake rose over the net holding pen and they got swept into the lake as a whole. We will now need to re-stock and start again. Fortunately they only cost 1baht each.
A question I’m always asked and the answer is how long is a piece of string depending on where you farm,soil conditions,weather , how ofter you fertilise, when you tap etc,etc .However I shall have an attempt. The last forecast for Thailand was for yields of 18,000 hg/ha. This approximately equates to 300kg per rai.( Last university studies came up with a figure of 285 kg a rai which ties in closely with this figure ) .
Looking in all the forums you see wild figures banded about of up to 600-800kg a rai but no evidence as to where theses figures come from. In fact if you look at the predicted yields for the very latest hybrids that are not yet commercialy available they give figures of up to 450kg per rai. So how can the older trees produce more !!.
The recommended planting density is approximatley 80 trees per rai. (
This ties in with what we have planted i.e almost 1000 trees on approx
12 rai). This means that 1 tree will optimistically yield 3.75 kg per
year.
Therfore last year when prices were high you could potentially make 280 bahts a tree per anum. I did the calculation on what we were actualy making on our mature trees and that came out at 200 bahts a tree. This figure also doesn’t take into account running costs such as fertiliser and man-power etc. This year with rubber prices down by half then the returns are down dramticaly.
Can money be made from rubber – yes – if prices recover . Can you make a fortune that most people seem to think on all the forums – NO. You only have to look at how the rubber tappers live. They take between 40-50% of the revenue for their labour. If there was that much money to be made they would all be living in smart houses and driving around in a mercedes. How do they live – In a shack and get around on a motorbike. QED.
Spent the Day at farm number 1. Bao cut the grass and weeds between the Rows of Trees using the tractor whilst myslelf and Tim cut down the weeds in between by Hand, Started and 8:30 and finished at 16:00 . The weather is hot and sunny at the moment – so hard going working in these conditions.
Not gone 200 yards today on my bike when I encountered a couple of elephants walking up the street. Then a few yards further on a man was ploughing his Paddy field with a Water Buffalo ? A few people were watching as this has become an unusual event now ? most farmers have mechanised buffalo ( kwai lek) . Not the thing you see everyday in the UK.