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The Organic Coach

~ www.paulhenares.com

The Organic Coach

Monthly Archives: July 2011

The Farm on a Cliff

29 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by the organic coach in natural farming methods, Organic Farming

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

African Nightcrawlers, Boracay Island, organic farming, organic vegetables, shredder, vermicomposting, Yapak

terraced vegetable plots

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

                               – Walt Disney

Dreaming and visualization are very much part of a farmer’s work. Around four months before this post, I was brought to a tiny piece of land on a rock cliff at the northwestern end of Boracay Island called Yapak. My good friend, who owned this, was looking at creating a sustainable organic garden to supply his family food requirements at home. While it sounded like a great plan, I had given my honest opinion and said this was close to impossible as a project. Boracay, for one, has very high rates for public water as it was coming from the mainland and pumped on an underwater pipe to the island. We were also planning to build on a rocky cliff, quite a challenge to any farmscaper with enough experience in designing farms.

greenhouse on a cliff

I had already made a farm near the beach, another carved out of forest and even some in bare land – this was to be the ultimate farmscaping challenge. My take on the whole thing was it’s next to impossible but certainly doable. I told my friend this can only work with one design, terraced vegetable beds and green houses for the plants. For the water, we

first harvest

would need a rain catching system with a large tank for the dry season in the summer months of the Philippines. It seemed like an incredible project and I actually forgot about the possibilities of this coming to life.

I found myself on the way to Boracay a little over a month later, in a van full of cargo that the owner had ordered. A waste shredding machine, a box full of African Nightcrawler worms, some pineapple suckers, some seedlings and liquid organic fertilizer we made at the farm. I was on my way to relocate to this island I considered my second home, it seemed like I was relocating a farm with me as well.

shredder and anaerobic composting beds

The worms found a comfortable home with lots of food coming from the nearby Material Recovery Facility. The shredder, the seedlings, the suckers and the fertilizer all went good use around the farm. The farm now had 10 vegetable beds, neatly lined along the cliff-side, and some had a greenhouse over it as well. This was mainly for the lettuce we were to produce here, a delicate crop that can only survive protected from heavy rainfall. We also constructed a rain catching system with enough water for a few months use. We had created a cool little farm on a sloping rocky hillside in Boracay Island.

organic lolo rossa

The rest of our open plots are grown to tomato, arugula, basil, spring onions, zucchini, cucumber, sugar beets and radish. We will soon put up a nursery which will have a nice collection of gourmet culinary herbs like sage, marjoram, oregano, thyme, rosemary and mint.

Three months after we had first talked about it, I was harvesting our first crop of arugula from the garden and had it for lunch. The first harvest, as farmers go, is always a time of celebration. It is usually offered to special guests and enjoyed by the family. There were none of them that day. Just me and a friend, munching on some fresh, crispy arugula leaves, sun-dried tomatoes, a tangy dijon vinagrette and some grated parmesan. It was a real cause for celebration, I suppose. When what seemed impossible is done, when what seemed realistic is surpassed and when nature conquers the odds and works its wonders just the same – it is truly a time to celebrate.

sunday harvest

12.879721 121.774017

Amanpulo : One Last Call

17 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by the organic coach in natural farming methods, Organic Farming, travel and leisure

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Tags

Amanpulo, organic certification, organic farming, organic vegetables, Pamalican Island, vermicomposting

amanpulo sunset

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                ~Lao Tzu

It has been a year of coming full circle for me, coming back to where I started. This time, returning to the roots of my island farming career once more – to the tiny island known around the world as “Amanpulo.” This was where “island farming” was first coined, as a fun status update on my Facebook page which I wrote on my first visit here over three years ago. Ironically, I am also writing this from Casita 30 – the same treetop cottage I was given on my first visit here back in 2008. I was still a novice farmer then, and Amanpulo was my first ever project outside of our farm in Negros Island. I had been learning the ropes of organic farming then, having gone back to my home island of Negros after 3 years of living in yet another little piece of paradise called Boracay.

Casita 30

This time around,  I was in Amanpulo with an organic guarantee inspector, to have our little organic garden finally certified – the highlight of over three years of patient work. We were set to become the first island resort in the Philippines to have a certified organic farm. And as I looked back over three years of painstaking work, I gave myself a little tap on my shoulder even as I was out laying on a beach bed overlooking the neighboring island of Manamoc. We had truly created a gem of a garden here and I was mighty proud of it too.

amanpulo organic garden

It was a truly daunting task when we started this garden in 2008. The island had a tiny garden with a few plots, some clayish soil and some puny little plants in it. The island, itself, has no top soil. Essentially a huge sand bank where plants started to grow, Pamalican Island is barren, dry and has a large number of animals and birds roaming freely around it. We started using kitchen waste for our vermicomposting substrate,, mixing it with shredded garden waste which was collected daily. These were put in compost pits to decompose and fed to worms later to create fertilizer. We started to ferment fruit scraps, fish guts and seaweed – all waste products from the kitchens as well as the beach that were being collected everyday.

amanpulo organic garden

Today, the organic garden supplies a good amount of the vegetables the resort consumes regularly. At several of their food outlets, farm-to-plate salads are served to guests straight out of our daily harvest. The garden also grows native herbs that are used for Vietnamese restaurant. The Picnic Grove serves fresh arugula salad for guests as an addition to their ordered pizzas.

fresh arugula salad

When you grow lettuce in a farm with top soil and adequate sunlight, it may seem quite normal and the work of nature. When you do this less than 50 meters from the beach, in a hot and humid tropical island, that would already be close to a miracle. As the French would say, “Tout es possible,” or everything is possible. What we can dream and conceive, we can truly achieve. Even making a certified organic farm in a barren tropical island in the middle of the Sulu Sea. Nature can put on an awesome show, we just need to be creative enough to give it a unique venue.

aman spa

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Argonauta : New Home, New Beginning

02 Saturday Jul 2011

Posted by the organic coach in travel and leisure

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Tags

argonauta boracay, Boracay Island

boracay sunset and paraw sailboat

“I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this – we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”
                                                                                          – Hilaire Belloc

I came full circle last month again, leaving my beloved Farmville in Negros to move back to Boracay Island once more. It was a quick decision made in the most difficult circumstances. The farm website I had built was gaining ground on the net, we were getting more requests for training and consultancy services. There were inquiries from Japan about exporting organic bananas, Malaysians were inviting us to Kota Kinabalu for meetings. Yet, I was totally focused on one thing – coming back to Boracay. Having lived there for three years till 2007, I had always missed my friends , the people who had become my family in the years I was there. Now there were new projects to be done and new opportunities to explore once more. This was to be a new beginning for me, the next chapter of my colorful and exciting life. And Argonauta was to be my new home.

argonauta boracay

Argonauta ( www.argonauta-boracay.com ) is a quaint boutique hotel perched atop the rocky hills of Hagdan in Barangay  Yapak, on the northwestern end of Boracay Island. Built in 2008 and finished in 2010, it has 20 different rooms, apartments and villas – all having a magnificent view of the Tablas Strait and Punta Bunga beach below. Quite a distance from the world-famous White Beach, it was a side of the island I was least familiar with. Yet, it offered me the best of both worlds I have come to love – tranquility, which I had appreciated in over 4 years living at our farm and bustling Boracay nearby, a place I had grown to love as my second home. Still to be formally launched and opened, this was to be my home and also my work place. I am now consultant for the hotel, marketing it to local tour operators and getting it known on the internet.

boracay sunset color show

Argonauta has luxurious surroundings and room settings for individuals, couples, families and big groups. Located in a gated community, it has all the amenities guests can ask for. It has a small cafe/restaurant that can cater t0 your needs, a large roof deck for small parties and gatherings, a mini-bar and a swimming pool. Soon to be certified by TUV Rhineland, a German guarantee body, it combines in its premises the German brand of quality with the world-famous Filipino hospitality to create a distinct brand of service that is personalized to all types of needs.  It is set to be launched soon as a quality brand in the growing number of  hotels in Boracay.

ocean view from argonauta villa

Home, as they say, is where the heart is. And if this is so, the heart shall always know if it is in the right place at the right time. This is what my heart tells me, I am happily  home once again.

12.879721 121.774017

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  • The Treetment Project
  • The Farm on a Cliff
  • Amanpulo : One Last Call
  • Argonauta : New Home, New Beginning
  • Turmeric Traditions
  • Coming Full Circle: The Boracay Solid Waste System
  • Exploring the Sulu Sea: One for the Bucket List

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