I went back to the farm last weekend, August 26-27. As
usual, I pursued my hobby -- building new terraces, or expanding existing ones.
New and dried leaves, branches behind these stones, they later decompose and
become natural fertilizers to the trees.
It's an agro-forest farm and we realize lately that we can
earn more from tree farming than mango or banana farming. The "kurikong
manga" or cecid fly has wiped out mango harvests the past 3 years. This
year, no mango spraying again, hence no mango harvest and income for four years
straight now, as the pests are still around.
Selling lumber + uling/charcoal from the pruned branches
gives us monthly revenues that pay for the monthly salary of our two caretakers
there, plus some extra. This part used to have high or dense number of young trees, sunlight can hardly penetrate. As a result, they hardly grow big' plus there are many mosquitoes. Our caretakers removed many of the small trees, now sunlight can penetrate somehow.
The small and medium-size trees easily grow bigger and
taller once the big and mature trees beside them are harvested. They have more
sunlight, more soil minerals. It is now a perennial forest with selective
logging as sustainable revenue source.
Trees there are mostly mahogany. We started planting trees there in 1992,
about 300 seedlings lang, then more were planted in succeeding years. About a
decade ago, we stopped planting, too many naturally-growing seedlings already.
They're like grasses, we started uprooting many of them.
This part of the farm is near a creek where there are
many stones. I pay for extra labor who manually carries those big stones. The
smaller stones that stabilize the big stones at the back are collected around
the area where the terraces are built.
See also:
Stone Terraces, Part 6, February 23, 2014
Stone Terraces, Part 7, March 30, 2014
Presentation at WASWAC Seminar at BSWM, DA, May 13, 2014
Stone Terraces, Part 8, June 03, 2014
Terraces, Part 9, July 07, 2014
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