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So, the other day I joined a team from the provincial agricultural department on a trip up to Prasat Balang District, northeast of town, in order to arrange an extension session on the improvement of watermelon production. Neither watermelons nor the rainfed production systems of that area are a real focus for me. However, I like farms, I like extension work and I like tasty, little Cambodian watermelons. And in this village, approximately 75% of households produce watermelon. I was pretty excited. This trip was to lay the ground work for an upcoming event, which would be attended by the Minister of Agriculture and a number of other dignitaries. We were planning to meet with the village headman (actually, headwoman in this case– not too common) and a crowd of farmers to feel out their interests and gather some information for the planning process.

Due to a scheduling snafu, we were stuck with several hours to kill before the appointed meeting time. Since we were not far from home when we discovered this, I thought that we would just go back and wait at the office (it has air conditioning and a TV). There was some debate, and then one of the guys came out with “I know someone over here who has some interesting mangos…”

Our next stop was the home of a family who indeed have some interesting mangos.

These guys are big– they come in at about 1 kg per fruit (that’s just shy of 2 and a quarter pounds back where I come from). If you look closely in the picture above, you will see one of the extension agents holding a fruit in his hand (second person from the left, black t-shirt). That will give you an idea of how big these things were. The farmers did not know the name of the variety. They just found them at the market in Kampong Thom town, and propagated the trees themselves. Though some from my party suspected that they were an Australian variety.

Mangos aside, they had a great little integrated system. In front of the house, the family was preparing rice-based liquor (in the past, deepwater rice has been important for alcohol production, but I am not sure what rice varieties they used, and whether or not they grew them themselves). After a batch is prepared, the remnants of the mash are brought back behind the house and used to feed the little crowd of pigs that live back there. The family had several low-roofed piggeries, with occupants segregated by age, and a massive boar tied to a post in a little wallow nearby. Their manure then went to fertilize mangos, papayas, bananas, limes, a patch of pineapples (pictured below) and probably a bunch of other things which I missed because I was totally distracted by the mangos.

We did not stay long, and I left their house with more questions than answers (hence my cursory description). I really hope to get back and interview this family sometime, just for fun. They have such an fascinating set-up.