Mossfinn

I don't know how wise it is to tell me story, but here we go ..........
Was a farmer in Oxfordshire, working the family farm all my life, hard work and not much reward. Wife decided the life was too hard, so she divorced me, was awarded the family farm by the divorce judge (300 years down the drain), then promptly sold it. I was left living in a farm workers caravan on a pals farm aged 50+, no future for me. Depression set in and my pal decided to lift my spirits with a holiday in Pattaya.
Off we went, he was out doing the Pattaya thing every night, I sat in a bar and just chatted to the girls (some of them spoke really good English). Anyway, after a while I was getting quite friendly with a girl (not as a customer, too traumatized by the divorce and loss of my farm for sex with anyone). This girl finds out I was a farmer in the UK (arable mostly corn and wheat) and says her older sister has a farm up north and was recently widowed. Farm going to rack and ruin, other guys in the village asking for 'favours' in return for helping her on the farm, etc.
So entirely on impulse, we both get on a coach to visit the sister, 25 rai farm the previously husband grew corn, husband (previous farm owner) was earning extra cash building a bridge, fell off the scaffolding and died.  The older sister (late 20s) needed a new husband to run the farm, a bit of cash to repay a debt on the farm and someone for company. She spoke no English, I spoke no Thai, everything arranged/interpreted by the bar girl sister. A week later we were sharing a bed, a few weeks later we were married, now we share a life and family.
I now have new children, a new wife (half the age and one third the weight of my former UK wife), and a new family farm (well it can never be my farm, but it can be my childrens family farm)

Working a farm in Thailand is so much less hard work than working a farm in the UK, no regulations or forms to fill out, the weather is so much nicer, and the workload is so much less. Of course almost all the work is done by hand, but I sort of like that.

Four years on
I speak bad Thai, she speaks good English.
Farm is producing great corn again (harvest in the next 2-3 weeks)
Last year the headman assigned us 50 rai of forest to develop, after the monsoon I will have to make a start

Thailand is a great country, with great opportunities for an aging western man.