About
David B Lauterwasser is a German farmer who landed in Thailand in 2014 on a permaculture-farm internship and has not left. He spent five years on a small plot in the south, then in November 2018 moved with his wife Anuthida (Karn) to a steep hillside in the foothills of the Cardamom Mountains in eastern Thailand. They have been there for seven years. They call the project Feun Foo.
The land is a former fruit orchard and bamboo plantation, chemical-free for over fifteen years. Together they are turning it into a food jungle. Mangosteen, durian, mango, jackfruit, rambutan, marang, taro, yams, watercress, chillis, foraged greens, rabbits, fish. Karn brings the plant knowledge, the herbal remedies, the traditional food preparation, and the family ties that anchor the project to a rural Northeast Thai rice household. He brings the long writing, the seed-saving, the willingness to do the demonstration plot the wrong way and report what happened.
The new lane is the one to watch. Across late 2025 and early 2026 he and Karn rented a one-third-acre patch from a neighbouring farmer and started reviving Pakagayaw Karen swidden rice cultivation. They visited two Karen communities, Baan Mae Por Kee in Tak province and Baan Hin Laad Nai in Chiang Rai, both holding their land communally against state pressure to switch to corn. The aim is to bring that practice back to the valley they live in, in partnership with a local family rather than as an outside demonstration.
He runs the cropping side of Feun Foo at a net loss every year for seven years, says so out loud, and treats farm profit as the wrong question. The Substack he writes from the plot, called An Animist's Ramblings, has just over 2,000 subscribers. He has appeared on three small podcasts in the permaculture-and-primitivism scene. There is no book, no magazine feature, no NGO behind him. The work is the writing and the land, on the same plot, in the same valley, year after year.
Highlights
- Land
- 1.3 hectares · Cardamom foothills · 500+ cultivated species
- Tenure
- Year 7 on this plot · year 12 in Thailand
- Substack
- 2K+ subscribers · An Animist's Ramblings · paid tier
- Operating stance
- Net loss every year for 7 years · stated openly
Deeper Dive
Most online permaculture content is from people in years one to three of a project. He is in year seven on this plot and year twelve on Thai land overall. The catalogue reflects that. Twice a year he publishes a Rewilding Update that runs roughly thirty minutes of reading time and reports operational ground truth. The Self-Sufficiency Milestones and Magic Five-Year Threshold piece in September 2024 is a document only a long-tenure practitioner can write. The credibility of the writing is anchored to elapsed time on one piece of ground.
The deliberate loss-making is the structural read. Almost every public permaculture voice is selling a course, a book, a consultancy, or a YouTube ad slot. He runs Feun Foo at a net loss across every one of the seven years, names it in the writing, and treats conventional farm-economics metrics as the wrong unit of account. Income comes from the Substack paid tier, an older Medium archive at FeunFooPermacultureRewilding, and a small Patreon. The land's role is food, ecology, and now community contribution. The economic stance and the philosophical position are the same sentence.
The swidden lane reverses the usual direction of expertise. The standard frame for a Western permaculturalist in Asia is to demonstrate Western ideas to local neighbours. The Swiddening in the 21st Century piece from December 2025 and the Widening the Circle update from March 2026 do the opposite. He and Karn travel to Pakagayaw Karen communities holding traditional rice cultivation against state pressure to grow corn, learn the practice, then bring it back to a one-third-acre rented patch in their own valley with a neighbouring family. The footnotes name the villages. The stance acknowledges that the practice he is helping to revive is older and better than anything he could import.
The marriage is structural rather than decorative. Karn is named throughout the writing. She brings plant knowledge, herbal remedies, traditional food preparation, and the rural Northeast Thai rice-harvest household that supplies the project's grain in exchange for harvest help. Her family is the project's grain economy. Without her, the food jungle would still be a food jungle, but the swidden lane and the family-network anchor would not exist. The writing credits her without overclaiming her, which is the right register for a project of this shape.
In Their Words
“When money is used up, it's gone for good. But when your strength is used up, you simply have a good meal and a good night's sleep.”
“I finally found what I was looking for all along without even knowing it: a meaningful life.”