Mrs Sor Nak, Phnov Village, Svay Rieng province, Cambodia
Hi! I am Sor Nak and my husband Reach SomAn. We have five children, one son Chamroen who is in 8th grade at Check Secondary School which is about 4 km from here, and four daughters who have dropped school. One of them passed away a year ago. Two of them live and work in Kompong Som province but my daughter Sophorn is living with us in Phnov Village, Svay Chrum District, Svay Rieng province Cambodia.
Besides working in the field, my husband does the work and looks after the rice mill together with our son, who is on school vocation about two months. And our daughter Sophorn is in the rice field with other farmers. She in fact used to work in Kompong Som with her sisters two years ago but then decided to come back home and help me.
In the morning I sell at Veal Yun market in Svay Rieng Town, something like 6km from my house and I go back in the late afternoon. Because now the market is being constructed so sellers have to move outside to sell in the street market nearby.
I sell vegetables as you can see in here, which I collect from other growers in my village and other distributors at the market that’s why I must get up early and mine which are grown at home and water lily from the lake that lies close to my house and some fish my son or husband found in the field or lake and some are collected from other farmers around.
Well, we own a hectare of rice field just around our house. On the left, my daughter Sophorn working, pulling out the rice with other farmers from other villages and transplant them in the following morning.
We need to have some farmers to help us with this in 3 to 5 days’ time to get ready on a one-hectare rice field then we do not only pay for them and give them 3 times meal per day, but also give them accommodation.
This field is used for different purposes like now it is being used for rice and after rice I am going to start to transplant vegetable again. Soil in this field is very rich and fertile as vegetables and rice are rotated according to the season, rainy season is the best time for rice and dry season is better to grow vegetables.
I grow some kinds of cucumber, bitter gourd, garlic, lettuce, water green, water lily, long green bean and mint, where seeds are bought from a seller, Mrs Put Saroeun, an FBAs from IDE in the village, who also gives me some technical. Seeds from her are more reliable than from the market I can say because she has trained and also she will ask other advisors for help if she cannot.
Eh! this is the garden where I grow mint. It may look unhealthy to you, of course, because I have harvested many times already, and now I just leave the land free in this wet season then in the dry season I will start again and other vegetables too.
Not only vegetables and rice, we also have lots of mango tree fruit along the fence, which we can make some money once a year, usually in March or April. Some mangos are sold to the market and some other collectors would come to give us prices depend on each tree consists of more or less fruit.
Pigs! They are really not very good to me now. I actually had five pigs, firstly I had 3 later on I bought 2 more from the sellers at the market in Svay Rieng. Those two are kept in the same cage with other 3 but without any technical support, the two died and next the other 2 died as well that’s why you can see only one in here. Sometimes my son or daughter give the feed or clean the cage in the day time.
I don’t want to buy from the market again as some pigs are brought from neighbour country and they may use any chemical to make them grow and look healthy, but then when they are with us they would sooner die. However, I still hope this one could survive and I will keep it as breeding pig next time.
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