Tag Archives: organic farming

The Farm on a Cliff

29 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by in natural farming methods, Organic Farming

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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

Amanpulo : One Last Call

17 Sunday Jul 2011

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

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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

Antonio’s : Organic Farming Evolution

11 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by in natural farming methods

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Around the turn of the century, my parents were constantly travelling around the Philippines teaching vermicomposting and organic farming. As it was, one of their clients constantly took them to Batangas, around a three-hour drive from Manila. And a convenient stop was  Tagaytay, a beautiful city set along the ridge of the world-famous Taal Volcano.

taal volcano

Also in this place was a small organic farm started by a young couple who were close friends and relatives of mine. My parents would often come to visit this farm, share their technology and exchange ideas as the owner, then a new chef, would cook for them in a tent by his garden. They started composting with African Nightcrawlers soon after and evolved into a productive farm producing high-value organic vegetables, a business that is continuously growing to this day.

This farm eventually evolved into what is known today as Manuel Pedro Farms. It supplies organic vegetables and herbs to restaurants and hotels around Manila. They also have free-range eggs and free-range chicken that they sell to specialty stores, specifically to families with special children that need chemical-free diets.. In a recent visit, the owner was getting excited about her organic pigs that were about to give birth in a few days.  Today,  Agnes Escalante is known around organic farming circles as the “Queen of Mezclune,” a reference to the gourmet mixed vegetables she grows out of three farms she now operates around Cavite province. Perhaps the jewel of all that is the original farm in Tagaytay City. Their family now lives there, as well as a thriving restaurant which is  making its mark in the Philippine culinary world.

Antonio's devoted organic vegetable plots

It still sits on that old sloping property in the sleepy barangay of Neogan . An organic farm planted to baby gourmet greens and herbs. This one, though, now simply devoted to supplying only one client. Not just any client, but arguably one of the best restaurants the Philippines has ever seen.  Named after its charismatic chef patron, it is simply called Antonio’s.  Incidentally, it also happens to be ranked number 5 on the 2010 Miele Guide to Asia’s Top 20 restaurants and has been there 3 years running, the only Philippine restaurant on the list last year. Just the next one in a growing list of awards he has garnered throughout its evolution. It would take another page to describe the food he serves, and I would be completely biased because he is one of my closest friends. Dining in Antonio’s is not a meal, it is  an experience. Enough said, you have to try it to believe it. Last year, Tonyboy was judged by his peers as the best chef in the country. An industry honor deserving of a humble gentleman-farmer, who happened to create an organic farm that evolved into the culinary landmark that we see today. Antonio’s. An organic farm fully evolved.

Manuel Pedro Farms, Cavite

Coming Home To Farmville

20 Monday Dec 2010

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Buro Buro Springs Vermi Farm

Way before I had heard of Facebook’s Farmville, I was already living in it. I was quite amused at this virtual internet application of what was, to me, daily hacienda life in your computer at home. Where I come from, haciendas are aplenty and agriculture was, and still is, the lifeblood of our provincial economy.  As it was, I had figured by then it was my destiny to someday be living off the land, and here I was learning this thing called  organic farming.

In comparison to others, this hacienda I lived in was but a tiny speck in a sea of vast sugar plantations that one can see in the province of Negros Occidental. It simply was a different farm with different things in it. We did not have one single sugarcane plant, for starters. A rarity in this land they had often referrred to as Sugarlandia. This fertile province had been producing most of the country’s sugar since way before I was born, and this place was full of interesting stories about the wealth that this industry had generated and the characters it had spawned. We were the odd one. We grew vegetables anf fruits, raised chickens, bred composting worms and only used what came from nature. Organic farming it was called, and our farm was quite known for being one of the first ones. People started businesses from what they learned here. It was a showcase for integrated organic farming, using very little land to its full potential.

Hacienda Buro Buro

Hacienda Buro Buro is our family farm. As kids, me and my brothers had spent countless summers swimming in the mineral water pool, camping in the orchards and climbing the many fruit-bearing trees that filled it. It always had a special appeal to me, and I remember telling a friend many years ago that I would live here someday. In the years that I had been away, my folks built a  house in the farm where we traditionally had family celebrations. Nobody really lived there and I had decided this was going to be my home now, it was the start of 2008.  So here I found myself , fulfilling a self-made prophecy and moving home to Farmville. I have not looked back and will be living there for a long time. After a long journey, I was finally home.

vegetable green houses

The African Nightcrawler Worms, which were being bred in the farm were a source of much interest to people. People came from all over the country to see them and my parents went all over the country teaching about them. They were considered the pioneers of Vermiculture in the country and had helped start this organic revolution we see happening now. And it was still about the worms, these little nightcrawlers. My mom called them by a pet name, “Eugene” , taken from their scientific name. They first appeared in Africa but have since been used in tropical countries like Cuba. There are over 200o different species of these worms worldwide and composting is their purpose for existing. Like some cartoon characters, they were known as wonder creatures. They made fertilizer from all sorts of things, they renewed the soil and most of all, they generated a steady income stream. We were supplying most of the worms being used around the Philippines as the first commercial breeding farm of these tiny creatures. This became my first lesson in Farmville, observing these nightcrawlers and what they did. I continued to learn more about them as life moved slowly. We have actually sold over 6000 kilos of these over the last 12 years. I was amazed.

organic lettuce

african nightcrawler

Scientifically known as Eudrilus Euginae, they were interesting subjects of study for most people. They were true hermaphrodites, which meant they were both male and female.  Everyone bred with everybody else around and they multiplied so fast, you could hardly keep track of them. But I envied these little things. They, not me, lived the life as we would call it. They had free housing, free food, all the sex they wanted every single day. They ate so much I would never be able to match them, foraging on shredded farm waste and consuming as much as their own weight each day. They were also expensive little things, costing more than premium beef per kilo and demand was constantly increasing by the year. We became very good friends, naturally. I had to learn about them and the best way to learn was to make friends with them. They still amaze me to this day, and I’ve carried them with me wherever I’ve gone to build organic farms.

We have since become partners. They became an integral part of my work and started a career for me introducing them to other people. We’ve built farms in remote places, helped natural farmers and have travelled to beautiful islands as well. We’ve truly had one hell of a great ride together.  Welcome to Farmville. Live.