Tag Archives: organic vegetables

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

Getting Trashed : Farming from Farming Waste

12 Saturday Feb 2011

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amanpulo

Most of the attention is often focused on the big name projects I’ve been doing as a farming consultant, all for good reason. Beautiful islands with pristine white beaches are always easier to notice, they also seem to be the most challenging work I get to do. Tropical islands, by nature, are not ideal places for farming. In these places, people are more inclined to live like their ancestors have for years, off the bounty of the sea. Naturally, agriculture is a foreign language to them and usually arouses much curiousity.

Organic farming, more often than not, is even more amazing for them. To grow crops using nothing much but kitchen and garden waste is quite extraordinary, more so in islands in the middle of nowhere where there are no crops to begin with. Still, it uses the same principles, to bring back to nature what came from it in the first place. And using it in a way where high science meets low technology is the essence of organic farming.

 

San Miguel, Iloilo farm site

vermicomposting beds

Organic farming runs in my blood. My parents, both retired corporate executives, had started one of the first organic farms in the Philippines in the 90’s. They also started the first breeding farm for African Nightcrawler Worms in the country and our farm, was and still is the leading training center for this technology today. I also happen to live in this farm, having made it my home since 2008. All I know about farming I learned living here, pure interactive hands-on training. As a trainer, it was only natural for me to eventually evolve into an organic coach. While the high profile resorts get the most attention, I have made other farms in more obsucure areas out of the public limelight. With different conditions and different methods to adopt, they are little success stories that continue to educate me in the possibilities of using varied farming techniques. They are all part of the farming adventure as well, this post is all about these small farms in Panay, an area of vast rice plantations where we recycle agricultural waste to grow vegetable crops.

constructing the nursery

In a little town called San Miguel in the  province of Iloilo, there’s a curious new project we started in October 2010. It’s called  Sunnyvale Eco Farm. Less than a hectare, it’s one of the few organic farms producing high-value salad greens in Iloilo. It is the object of much curiousity in this little town of vast rice plantations and abundant rainfall, mainly because we work only with waste products from these rice farms. We pay people to gather rice straw, something they would burn as standard practice. We also pay people to deliver waste rice hull from the milling process, again something that is given for free and often burned as well. And ironically, we pay people to bag and deliver carabao and cow manure to the farm, something they have never ever heard of. When we were starting to clear land and farmscape the area, people would pass by and ask what we were actually doing there.

four months after breaking ground

Today, Sunnyvale Eco Farm is a small scale organic vegetable farm with big scale possibilities. It supplies a number of restauratns and hotels in Iloilo City but most of its produce is sent to Boracay, ending up in high end hotels like the Shangri-la and Discovery Shores. It seemed not so long ago that we broke bare farm land to make the first plots in this property, it is a fully functioning and productive farm four months later. Just another farmscaping adventure . And lots of surprises. All in a farmer’s day at work.

organic salad greens

Nabaoy River, Malay, Aklan

Nabaoy riverside houses

In the mainland across Boracay is the little known barrio called Nabaoy. A forest reserve with a few rice farms scattered around the lowland areas, it is well known for the river that runs through it. It is the same river that supplies the water for the world-known island called Boracay. Years ago, when the island was enjoying its early growth years, a golf course was constructed in an attempt to bring it to international standards. Lacking a sustainable water source, Boracay could not environmentally sustain its rapid expansion then. It definitely could not sustain a golf course which needed daily watering to maintain it. In a gigantic effort to make the seemingly impossible a reality, an underwater pipeline was constructed to bring in water from the Nabaoy forest reserve to the Boracay. Today, it sustains an island with close to a million tourists coming each year and over 30,000 residents with fresh running water.

farm nursery

Soon after that, Nabaoy attracted island residents longing for more tranquil surroundings away from a booming tourist destination. In a small parcel of land next to the river delta, there is a small organic farm called, simply, Lazy Greens. Started by an entreprising restauranteur eager to produce his own vegetables. Again, it became an object of curiousity as we gathered the agricultural waste around the area for use in the farm. Rice hulls, a waste product of the milling process is charcoalized and used as a soil conditoner. Carabao manure, which was left to decompose everywhere, was collected to be fed to the African Nightcrawlers. And the rice straw that farmers would burn after crops was gathered as food substrate for vermicomposting.

Lazy Greens Farm

Today, Lazy Greens produces arugula, lettuce, parsley, coriander and papayas. All organic and mostly for use in Dos Mestizos (www.dosmestizos.com), the only Spanish restaurant in Boracay and a popular dining spot. It is also used and sold in its newly opened delicatessen, Gusto y Gustos. Whatever excess produce it has, it sells at the Saturday Community Market for local residents to enjoy. High science, low technology. Converting agricultural waste to fertilizer, planting crops fertilized by waste. Just as nature intended it, healthy crops from healthy soil. Small surprises. Big results. Don’t panic, we’re doing it organic.

Pamalican: Lessons in Island Farming

27 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in Organic Farming

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Pamalican Island , photo credits to Amanpulo

Pamalican is a private island, set among the North Cuyo Islands, 360km south-west of Manila. Lying along the trading routes from Southern China to Borneo, the Sulu archipelago and the Spice Islands, the Cuyo Islands have been known to sailors and traders since pre-Spanish days.  Literally in the middle of nowhere, the people of these 40 islands live mostly by fishing and seaweed cultivation. The jewel of these islands is Pamalican Island. An island of of just over 60 hectares, it is surrounded by pristine white beaches and coral reefs.  Beyond are sandbanks and a channel where whales, dolphins  and sea cows have been glimpsed. On one end of the island, baby sharks would swim in knee deep water at sunset.  Here, on this little island paradise, is  a  resort quite famous around the world and simply as known as, Amanpulo.

windsurf hut

On this sunny day in July 2008, I was on a 19 seat Dornier 288 with s few tourists, loads of cargo and a few employees coming back from holiday. We were headed for Amanpulo and  I was coming on the personal invite of the General Manager who was looking for an organic farmer and had surprisingly found me through a friend who worked there. This was the trip of a lifetime. Amanpulo was arguably the most expensive island resort in the Philippines and was known to attract Hollywood celebrities and even royalty. And here I was, headed for this island as a guest. I felt like  I had won the lotto that day.

beach club

By then, I was already living in the farm and had a fair knowledge of the basics of organic farming.  Everything I knew was learned from first-hand experience in the farm. I knew nothing about farming in coastal areas, much more in a tropical island. It really did not matter now, I was on my way to Amanpulo and the mission was to explore the possibility of starting an organic farm. In a tropical island, in the middle of nowhere, in Palawan. I was both excited and nervous.

Amanpulo is, simply put, pure class. You take a private plane and land in the island’s private airport. Upon arrival, you are assigned your own golf cart for use during your stay. Guests are billeted in 40 private casitas scattered around the island, some of them with their own beach front area. There are 7 other private villas with its own pool and a beach front area. They have 4 restaurants, a gym, a spa, tennis courts, a library and all the water sports equipment you could want. Even a floating bar. At sunset, guests would rent the pontoon boat that was designed to accomodate a small cocktail party. It is also a nature reserve, where you would randomly see monitor lizards crossing the road and yellow-breasted orioles outside your window. Guests could request for private barbecue dinners on the beach front with their own private cook and waiter looking after their every need. The staff were all waving at you as you passed them and greeting you at every place you went. They were also required to know each of the guest’s names. It truly felt like the friendliest place on earth. This, I was later told, was the Aman experience.

amanpulo sunset

To my surprise, they had a little farm in the island. They grew a few vegetables, some herbs and ornamental plants. I was even more amazed to discover the island did not have any top soil. It was

amanpulo main beach

largely a huge sand bank and had only some wild growing plants around the island. They had started the garden from some clay soil that had been left from the construction of the resort many years ago. It was functional, but far from the guest attraction they wanted to create. We brought African Nightcrawler Worms to the island and started a vermicomposting facililty. We  shredded kitchen and garden waste to feed the worms. We gathered the waste sea weeds from the beach and used it as composting material. We rehabilitated the farm and created our own soil from compost, vermicompost and clay. A year later, we built greenhouses and started to grow salad greens.  We also started making our own liquid fertilizers from kitchen waste. I wasn’t long before we started to see surprising results. In a farm without top soil not even 100 meters from the beach, we were now growing lettuce and arugula. And we were doing it by recycling kitchen and garden waste through composting and fermentation. We now had a productive organic island farm.

amanpulo greenhouses

I’ve been consulting for Amanpulo  for almost three years now.  Today, our organic garden  produces vegetables and herbs for its various outlets. It has now become a guest attraction  as well, often featured by journalists writing about the island. The resort now offers a tour of  the organic farm as an option for children’s activities.  Guests are served freshly harvested salads from the garden at most of its outlets.

garden-to-plate salad

Manamoc High School students

The farm produces almost a ton of compost from its facilities each month and has become a self sustainable operation that supplies the main kitchen and its outlets with high-value vegetables,  as well as the employee dining facilities.  We have since expanded and still learning the intricacies of island farming as we move on. We now catch rain water and use it too maintain the garden.  In 2009, we started sharing this technology to high school students in the neighboring island of Manamoc. We brought a select group to Amanpulo for a day tour which included lectures, hands-on learning experiences and a some recreation time at the employee beach. They have since started their vermicomposting area and a small organic garden in their school premises.

organic arugula

In small and big ways, we strive to continue reducing the worldwide carbon footprint with each step we take.  We are also producing healthy food products for guests and even employees.  Amanpulo became the start of a new phase of my organic farming career. I have since built other farms in other places, still using the same things we did in Pamalican many years ago. I still visit Amanpulo,  it it is still a joy to come back to this first farm I had built. To see what has become of my earliest work. My earliest lessons, in the art and the science of island farming.

kitchen staff harvesting produce