ABSTRACT
Just like an elephant taking small steps, closing the circle after many years of wandering and returning to graze on the same land, we come back to the same fallow place and prepare it again for cultivation. We can tell by the trees the age of a forest. We cut the plants on a small patch of land, leave them to dry and burn the remains to ashes. Only in the first year we grow rice and a variety of vegetables there and then leave it for seven to eight years before we come back and start the cycle again. It is a form of natural subsistence economics. Some fields are steep. Some are far. Every year we decide anew with the permission of the spirits, who cultivates which piece of land. We share the water, the forest and the land. It is communal land, it doesn't belong to anyone.
