Stone terraces after 6 years

Building stone terraces is among my favorite activities in the farm. We started building good stone terraces in 2004 when we also built my new treehouse then.

Here’s one side of the terraces near the creekside, picture taken from the 2nd floor of my treehouse. This was in April 2004. Notice the small and thin mahogany trees then.



And here’s the same view 6 years after, taken in April 2010…



Last month, we trimmed those young and tall mahogany trees beside my treehouse. It’s getting dark because of the thick leaves outside.

Another view of the terraces from below, near the creek. Picture taken in April 2004.


The mahogany trees were young and thin then. Six years after, the trees have grown bigger and taller, it’s darker now under the canopy.



On another side of my treehouse, there is another cluster of stone terraces beside our dinning hall. Picture below taken in March 2004, when the structure was under construction.



And here’s the view 5 years after, picture taken in March 2009…



And another picture taken a year after, April 2010…



Some of the trees near my treehouse have grown big and tall, they have become dangerous should they be brought down by trong typhoons. Those trees were either trimmed at the top, some are scheduled to be cut within the year, get the wood for lumber, and remove the danger to my treehouse.



Above is another view of the dininghall with stone terraces and a foot bridge. Picture taken last May 2010.



Two guys are taking care of our farm with care and loyalty. In the middle is Ninong Endring Paragas, my wedding godfather. Beside him is his son, Danny, who also became my wedding godson. Without the help of these two guys, all those stone terraces would not have been built and preserved, and all those trees that we planted several years ago would have been cut and stolen by lots of wood poachers. These small-scale illegal loggers just live in the same barrio.

My daughter's bunny

Several weekends ago, my daughter, Elle Marie, asked to have her own pets. We went to a pet shop – the birds are pricey and they can be noisy and Elle doesn’t like noisy animals. Another option is a puppy but it should be messy to keep a puppy inside the house, the hair, some poops and barking could be inconvenient for her too. We ended up with a… bunny!



Elle was so happy with her bunny that day. She stayed late that night, she wanted the bunny to sleep beside and we haggled for an hour that she can’t do it, that the bunny should go back to its cage. A bunny does not make any noise, it only wants to eat and eat vegetables and grass. We bought a pair actually, but the other one died after a few days. Here’s the remaining one, it has superb appetite.

One day, we brought it to an open area and let it run around.



There was a cat that was strolling in the park that day and wanted to attack the bunny. I had to scare the cat away. Later we brought up the bunny on the elevated play area.



Among the bunny’s favorite food is kangkong. Here eating its fresh leaves of kangkong in its cage.



Since it’s time consuming to be buying fresh kangkong from the public market every 2 days or so, I started planting the kangkong stem in pots. Some stems have grown new leaves, others wilted.



Now I have a little kangkongan! 

Dam vs. soil erosion

Soil erosion is a natural phenomenon, like rain and drought, like day and night, like winter and summer. But if one wishes to minimize if not control such soil loss mainly due to heavy rains and flooding, one has to build dam checks and obstruction, man-made or natural, in order to trap a big portion of the eroded soil brought down by flash floods.

And this is one of the small dams we built in our farm made of stones, no cement.




It is about 4 feet high already starting from the base. The base used to be the “ground level”. We built it more than a year ago only, and during the last rainy season, it has trapped eroded soil and organic matter from higher elevation about 2 feet high.

Here’s another view of the stone dam. There is a small coconut tree that has grown near its base. This tree should help stabilize the base.



Here’s the back view of the dam, below. A layer of smaller stones stabilize the front layer of big stones. The force of the oncoming flood will hit the back layer first and the excess water will overflow on top.



This back layer is the one that will trap the eroded soil and organic matter brought down by the flood. Thus, after sometime, the back layer of stones will disappear and will be covered by new soil. Notice the leaves that we deposited at the back as initial deposit of organic matter.

And here’s the top view, below. There are now 3 layers or stone terraces in this dam. The 2nd and 3rd layers from the right are actually sitting on the trapped soil by the 1st layer (rightmost) of stones that we built last year.



The width of this 3rd and last layer of stones is about 1 ½ foot. When new soil has reached the level of this last layer, then a 4th and new layer of stones will be built on this new soil. And so on until this dam gets higher and higher, trapping several cubic meters of eroded soil from higher elevation every year.

This is the gully that we hope will be slowly covered by new soil every year.



What’s the point of doing these things? Well, three points. One, minimize and control soil erosion. Two, improve the water retention capacity of this part of the farm, creating a new water table someday. And third, build bigger and higher stone terraces, without cement, and have a beautiful layers of big stones rising up every year. Should be a beautiful spot for picture taking someday. :-)



Above are the guys who helped me build the 3rd layer of stones just last weekend. Our caretaker in the farm is Nong Endring Paragas, right most. He is also one of my wedding godfathers. Assisting him is his son, Danny Paragas, leftmost, who also got me as one of his wedding godfathers, and the world is turning round and round. :-) In the middle are two teen-agers who work for 1 day with us, Hardji and Marlon, and both are nephews of Danny.

The rains of January

Since January 1 this year, the sky above Metro Manila and surrounding provinces has been generally covered by clouds, for 18 days straight now. Last night there was a light shower, this afternoon it rained. The probability that the Sun is not covered by thick clouds the past few days is only about 15 percent. I was also informed by my sister in our province in Neg. Occ. (1 hour by plane south of Manila), that it's been raining there almost daily. These things are unusual.

Wet or rainy season in our part of the tropics is from June to around mid-October. From mid-October to Feb is "dry and cold", from March to May is dry and hot".

It was also unusual in 2009. Prolonged "cold front" from December 2008 until mid-April, with scattered rains in some parts of the country. Then the rainy season started in mid-April. Two typhoons each in April and May, supposedly the 2 hottest months of the year.

I'm observing these things because I'm testing my own simple hypothesis, with no formal tests, just layman observation -- that the "frigid parade" from the Arctic or north pole is marching south, down to the equator.

Meanwhile, two new papers were uploaded in our website re warming scam:

1. "On warming hysteria" by Al Protacio, 6 pages,
http://www.minimalgovernment.net/media/alprotacio-201001.pdf

2. "Climate alarmism and Copenhagen" by Nonoy Oplas, 22 pages,
http://www.minimalgovernment.net/media/mg_20100104.pdf

Al Protacio is a Filipino geophysicist in a geothermal plant in UK.

Rainy September and int'l climate meetings

We're past 3 weeks of September now, and I think I counted only about 5 or 6 days that there was no rain this month. Lately it's hot in the morning, then very cloudy if not raining in the afternoon. The past 2 days and today, the sky was always cloudy. It rained for about 7 hours yesterday, stopped in late evening, and the rains are back this morning.

My friend from Hanoi said it was sunny there last week. Maybe the rain clouds in the Philippines came from evaporated water from Vietnam. :-)

The climate bureaucrats and "negotiators" from many countries, they should be enjoying the frequent travels and perks. Too many internatinoal climate meetings. They just finished their meeting in Bonn, Germany last month. This week, they met in UN, NY office. Next week, they will meet again in Bangkok. Next month or November, they will meet again in Spain. And in December, they will have a big meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The current deep solar minimum, the deepest in a century, can possibly result in a repeat of the Dalton Minimum global cooling that happened 2 centuries ago. Thus, instead of preparing for drought, we should prepare for lots of flooding. Those in the temperate regions, they should prepare for long winters, short summer -- it actually happened in the US and Canada this year, even in south america like argentina.

Rainy September

There were just too much rains this month in the Philippines.

From September 1 to 13, Sunday, mostly cloudy days; it rained almost everyday except for 2 days.

Last Monday it was half-cloudy, half sunny.
Last Tuesday, it was sunny the whole day, at times zero clouds.
Yesterday, the clouds and rains were back, there were street flooding again.
Today, Thursday, sunny in the morning. Thin clouds appeared in early afternoon. Now as I write this, there is a heavy downpour, though it does not seem to last long.

It seemed that the sky would be sunny only for sunlight to get evaporation, to accummulate thick rain clouds again. Then dump the rains anytime, anyday.

I remember last August 2003. While a severe heatwave killed more than 35,000 in Europe, we had 7 days and 7 nights straight of almost non-stop rains in the Philippines. Several dozen people died because of landslides, drowning from bloating rivers, and diseases. Some because of hunger perhaps. There is nothing to eat when almost everything is flooded. I remember that month very well because I was preparing to go to Sweden for a 7-weeks seminar on "Sustainable agriculture in an environmental perspective" from September to mid-October that year.

I visited our farm last Saturday. I learned that many rice farmers have already harvested their farms for the first crop, they were happy with the early onset of the rains. But too much rains can be a problem for the farmers too. After harvesting, they cannot dry their rice as most of rice farmers in the Philippines depend on solar drying. If the harvested rice don't get dried for long, it blackens and the quality and taste is adversely affected.

Meanwhile, I believe in the Sun-climate link theory. Deep solar minimum, very little or zero sunspots, meaning weak solar magnetic field, allow the entry of plenty of galactic cosmic rays that reach the Earth as the solar wind is weak to drive them away. These cosmic rays help form the aerosols that become the seeds in cloud formation. More clouds, less sunlight to reach the Earth surface, more rains, there is global cooling.

Around my treehouse

Around my treehouse are either trees and rice or grass, depending on the season. Here’s one view – rice in the front, trees on both sides and on the back.


A view from my house, ricefield during the rainy season. Our caretaker plants 2 crops per year. The vacant portion is where the cows would sometimes rest and sleep in the evening.


During summer and dry season, the land is left on fallow to “rest”, the cows eat the rice straw and whatever grasses that will grow.


On one side of my house are thick branches of different trees, mostly mahogany but there are a few fruit trees (a tree each of avocado, rambutan, jackfruit, calamansi, etc.). These fruit trees though do not bear good fruits because they don’t get enough sunlight as the mahogany trees are tall and get most of the sunlight.


On another side near my treehouse is our outdoor dining table. It also has cogon roof. The roof suffers as the mahogany trees become bigger and taller, after the rain, the cogon don’t get dry immediately as sunlight is blocked by the tall trees.

Organic chicken

We re-started our organic chicken just a few months ago. We have about 17 chicken for now, mostly female. None so far are laying eggs regularly, should be the rainy season, and there are no “palay” (unhusked rice) to eat yet.

A few years ago, we experimented it, the chicken were free roaming, there were plenty of them already, nearly a hundred perhaps. But there are several enemies for the free-roaming chicken.

One, our dogs. When the dogs are eating, the chicken would come in to eat the scattered food, which makes the dogs angry, some of the chicken have broken legs or broken wings, etc.

Two, the wild animals – monitor lizard (“bayawak”), wild cat (“musang”), even hawks flying more frequently above the farm since they could see plenty of hapless chicken below. And possibly some snakes that prey on the smaller chicken.

Three, thieves that are passing by, they chanced upon the roaming chicken, hit the chicken when no one is looking, carry and steal the injured chicken in their sacks or bag.

In addition, some of the chicken who were terrified or shocked being chased by the dogs or people passing by, learned not to come back to their resting place in the evening, they found other places to spend the night several meters away. Later on we did not know where they went.

So this time, we are building an enclosed area for them.

The lower fence is made of small, native bamboo (“bulo”), about 2 to 3 feet high. Then used fish nets up to the roof. The roof is made of cogon. All native materials except the fish nets.


We have one evening caretaker, Fernando. He works making charcoal in our farm, removing low-lying branches, extra branches, fallen trees and branches. That's mainly his day time job. He's very industrious. He would visit his family in the barrio by late afternoon and go back to the farm by evening.


In the evening, he either rests, or hunt fish and wild frogs in the nearby creek using electrical current. This will be his viand in the farm, the extra he will bring to his family.