The Joy of Harvest!

When I asked Juli what's the best thing in farming, she answered with "harvest". And I'm pretty sure that's what most people will say, including myself. There's joy inexplicable seeing a plant come out from a seed. 

Who could resist these lettuce? 

Months of uncertainty blossoming into its beautiful beacon. 

And today, I had the sweetest corns I've ever had. I munched bits of them raw and wanted to finish them as they were. But one thing that struck me was that they aren't perfect. They're bungi-bungi as shown in the next photo. But these corns simply told me one story, that if you're not pretty, it doesn't mean you're not valued? These are the most imperfect corns one can harvest but these are the sweetest ones above par. Lesson? Don't judge a corn by its cob. Or more like, that beloved of yours has all the beauty inside.

I wonder if it can it be harvest season all the time? Can I be spared of dying seedlings? Can seeds just sprout into trees and bear fruit at one's click of fingers? I doubt it....

Tribute to Farm Workers

It's farm tribute time once again. A team runs a farm, and though our Lawang Bato Farm has a very informal group of people helping out in it, we are a team, nonetheless.

The youngest in our 'hood is two-year old Yanyan. Everytime I'd arrive, he'd position himself at the back of the car, expecting to carry anything from a seedling and empty yakult bottles to pails of kitchen waste. Of course, we don't let him hold the latter, the weight of which would even surpass him. But he'd always want to carry at least more than one thing in his feeble hands. 

 He'd get his hands on everything everyone else is holding. He'll touch the soil, the sprayer and spay water at each sprouting leaf on the egg tray, the bottles, everything! Once I saw him staring at the ducks for several minutes and when I approached, he mumbled incoherent words, perhaps duck terms.

We love his energy, his enthusiasm, his delight. And he gets to sit on his throne when he wants to, or his wheeled horsey around.

Then there's her aunt Meme who helps in the cutting and chopping of everything that needed to. She said she enjoys experimenting, especially when we were working on the fertilizers.

Not in the picture is sister Tata, the mother of Yanyan and sister of Meme. In between breastfeeding Yanyan's younger brother Yohan, she'd talk to the little sprouts and give them the gentle stare to rise up. And true enough, she has grown more seeds than anyone of us had.

Then there is the girls' dad. We call him Mr. Guard because he works as one and when it's not his shift, he comes and till soil, move wood around, cut overly-long leaves or branches, or simply carry Yanyan, who calls him Lolo, and actually awaits for him by the gate when he knows he's coming. He knows the trees and the vegetables but he doesn't eat them. Not yummy, he says.

 Then there's caretaker Lisa, the mother of the sisters, wife to Mr. Guard, and granny to the two toddlers. She does the weeding, the general instructing of everything, and the one who announces when there are vegetables good for the picking. She also thought of the idea to put this seedling tray as such below that has proven more effective than my yakult bottle version.

So there you go, the farm workers who contribute as much to the Lawang Bato Farm as yours truly who sweat it out everyday but would never be close to her enthusiasm if not for these wonderful people around.

Planting Season Starts

With all the preparations on row, let the planting begin. 

The first that got into land was Lettuce Rapid. They were growing at "rapid" pace so they got the first taste of freshly-tilled land. 

Meme and I decided to see how it would work so each of us took care of one row and we'll see whose lettuce would grow better. It's a silly thing to compare, but maybe that's just being "accountable" on who has a greener thumb, ha!

The cucumbers were racing up with the rapids. They went up to a good four inches until we decided that it's time to move to bigger ground.

They got to stay on this short plot and covered with banana trunk peel so ensure shade in the noonday sun. A day after, I saw how Mang Eddie had done away with the triangle caps and given them a trellis to climb on. Sweet! Well, they may not be needing it yet, but, at least it's there awaiting the cucumbers' climb.

The third one that got to kiss the soil is the tomato, beside the cucumbers. The last time Juli and Jessa planted tomatoes, they grew tall but their fruits were wilted and infested. It's hard to tell their fate at this moment, but as in anything in life, "only God can make it grow".

Nursery

I remember being 3 and being sent to nursery school. First day, second day, third day, and who knows until when, I'd cry whenever my dearly-departed AE would leave me in the classroom at the care of my teachers. Being the one who took care of all of us siblings, AE told me that I was the one who cried the loudest and would look out from the window to make sure I see a glimpse of her and she has not left me. For some reasons, I remembered this scene while doing "nursery" with the seeds. 

When the seeds in the germination bed started to sprout with life, we placed them in more solid ground. Again, egg trays seem to be the fashionable thing so we filled them with vermicast, the poop of African night crawler earthworms that become soil-like. 

The lettuces (frillice, rapid, lolo rosa, romaine, and  arugula) look real cute and extremely delicate. I must have killed at least two in the transplanting of these centimeter-long sprouts to their new beds.

After a while, though, some started to wilt. They didn't look like they liked their new beddings. And true enough, after a few more days (weeks) on the egg trays, the little peeking green that they used to be, disappeared. 

It's a saddening sight. I tried to let everything stay longer in hopes that the little life I see in them would mature into at least a leaf. Some did, but most simply....didn't. Sad.

Like me crying, maybe they were shaken with the new environment. Plants get stressed, too. I should have been more sensitive in handling them, and hear them when they were crying. But I didn't. I had high hopes that they'll survive and wasn't even bothered that their delicate status required more of my patience and time. 

AE knew that, so she stayed longer and would look back at her iyakin three-year-old alaga through the window until my attention was more on the teacher than her. I miss her, it's her 8th death anniversary today. Who knew she has been teaching me farming lessons way back in nursery school. The Farmer knew. And that's why I had to be reminded of that. 

The Resourcefulness of Randy

Tending a farm is not a one-man job, much less a one-woman challenge. So I'm very grateful of the people who are around, who may have been around just because they just need the job, but still their presence and contribution cannot be discounted. Such appreciation happened today.

We needed carbonized rice hull (CRH) to loosen up our soil. And I learned from the Costales Farms seminar that CRH was simply burnt rice hull that went through a carbonizer like this: 

Weeks before, I had already asked my brother to make one like this. And he asked me to draw it on hand with the measurements that I wanted. But in true delaying fashion, I had forgotten until there was already need for it. So I brought up our lack of CRH for our clayish nursery soil and was told by Randy, one of the carpenters in the area, that we actually still have half a sack lying around. 

When he showed it to me, however, it was rice hull that we have and not CARBONIZED rice hull. Making a carbonizer for the un-burnt rice hull may take a few more days. After asking me how CRH should look like, Randy then said he'll try to burn them. I didn't know how he'll do it until I saw smoke coming out from his makeshift stove. 

It has a galvanized iron roof bed, a stack of ipil ipil branches, an old can of oil cut at the bottom and laid with a screen. Impressive! And mind you, all these were just lying around the area, no extra welding, no extra junk-shop purchase required. And the CRH came out just as how I saw it from the Costales Farm. This is simple resourcefulness at its best.

Beautiful Seed

So with all the fertilizers in the brewing zone, I think we're ready to start, and I'm ready as well! And where else do we start but from the seed. 

With packets of seeds on hand, we (and when it's we it means me, the caretaker Lisa, her daughter, and the two other carpenters who are around), are starting on the plan!

Staying true to being a diligent student, I tried what I learned from the Costales seminar to the letter with a bit of adjustments as I eyeball the minutes and certain raw materials. That's just me being "creative" without going out of line. And true to my "no waste" mantra, I collected all the possible containers that I can in our kitchen and brought them to the farm.

Thus, this egg tray that turned into a soaking tray for the seeds to absorb all those microorganisms and dissipate whatever chemical residues they may have. 

I found these cotton husks while walking and they were just lying on the ground, perhaps swept by the recent storm. I picked them up and they made perfect bedding for germinating the seeds.

And when there weren't enough of them, I took out tissue from my bag, and turn them into germinating beds as well.

It's hard to imagine how these yellow flat pellets can turn into red and green bellpeppers. How these red dots can be onions of so many layers. How these oddly shaped  How these spiky black freckles can be lettuce. But today and in the succeeding days that I germinated seeds, I'm reminded that yes, we all started from seeds. Everything and everyone else did. A beautiful seed.

The Making of Fertilizers

Organic is when you let nature take its course and you don't force things to happen. We decided to go organic and be one with nature in the farm.

So over the past two weeks, we were collecting food waste from our own kitchen and those of the elementary school right across. 

Organic Fertilizer #1: Potash. We added equal amounts of chopped banana peel and molasses, and some EMAS (a solution we made previously from effective microorganism, think Yakult-like substance for the soil) and let them ferment for 7 days in a sealed container.

Organic Fertilizer #2: Kitchen Compost Tea. We put two pails on top of each other, drilling holes at the bottom of the top pail and the bottom cover, and sealing the two together. We collected all the vegetable peel for the day and put them on the top pail (with the holed bottom), put bokashi (just a mix of rice byproducts), and seal them for two weeks. Every three days, we open the bottom pail and get around 750ml of fermented kitchen juice. Not for drinking, but for drenching on the plants.

Organic Fertilizer #3: Fish Amino Acid. We found fish bones and heads in our freezer, apparently from a fish fillet dish eaten months ago. Then Lisa, our caretaker, had also gone to the market the day before and asked for fish innards. We chopped everything up, added molasses and microorganisms solution (EMAS) and we're going to let it sit for two weeks. Not a sweet fish soup for a rainy day, but one for the soil, yet again.

  

Organic Fertilizer #4: Organic Pest Repellant. We had an enormous harvest of chili so with the help of a hand-winding mincer, the chilis came together with other farm plants for this fertilizer. The recipe called for garlic and neem leaves but since we only had a few neem leaves on hand, we used ginger, a few sour leaves of an unknown name but is put in sinigang, marigold flowers that blossomed from free seeds (we just asked them from someone who already has marigold plants) planted four months ago, and other tangy leaves we can find in the farm: basil, chili leaves... I hope they work and won't contradict each other. 

We added a liter of molasses and a liter of EMAS. And a liter of natural vinegar and a liter of lambanog (distilled coconut wine), both bought along the road from Laguna to Manila en route Quezon. They're going to sit around for two weeks until everything ferments. Apparently, the stuff in the chili, ginger, marigold, and tangy leaves can ruin the metamorphosis of certain pests. That's the natural way of doing it: give pests their due counterpart with an even stronger pest!

Organic Fertilizer #5: Plant Extract Foliar Fertilizer. This is supposed to help leafy plants become leafier. That's why in the mixture, we put a lot of grasses and leaves. It's supposed to be 70% weeds but we put mostly whatever weed-like stuff we can find such as lemongrass stalks, kangkong stems, and other wilted leaves. And when the percentage didn't make it, that's when we plucked out random grass and put them in as well. We added molasses, EMAS, and rainwater. 

Organic Fertilizer #6: Calcium. So even plants need calcium. I found a lobster shell in our refrigerator, some eggshells collected from eating a lot of them, and these were sauteed on a hot pan (no oil) until they become dry. These were pounded until they were smaller pieces and we added natural vinegar onto it. For three weeks, the vinegar is going to extract the calcium from the shells and the liquid can then be used as a calcium booster for the plants.

Organic Fertilizer #7: The other wastes that cannot manage to be in the above fertilizers go to the worms. It's called vermi-composting where African night crawlers chew on decomposing kitchen stuff, poop out, and we use the poop as fertilizer. Nothing can be more organic than that!