So I wondered to myself: “What happens if an upland hill dry rice field is never harvested?”. I asked a few people, but the only answer they gave was “The rice would re-seed itself”. That is nice to hear, but it is a very simplistic and not-so-satisfying answer. There are a lot more factors at
Sometimes you just got to be resourceful. When things break, creativity rescues us! We once had no other water source but the dirty water from the river. We used our manual water pump, but the water had a bad smell, grime, grits, and oil in it. So in our desperation (and feeling sticky for not
Often, guests who come into our house notice that we don’t have a television. This is regarded with a look of disappointment and sympathy. They would ask how our daily lives could be fulfilled without it, and why we choose not to watch TV. So, I tell them these 5 healthy benefits of not having
Making biochar can either be easy or over complicated. The easy way is to simply burn wood in a pit and then pour either sand or water over it before it turns into ashes. Once it is ashes it is no longer biochar. The complicated way is to burn woodchips in a specialized (expensive kiln).
Our dog, Yaku, was unwanted. She was an Askal, a Filipino term used for dirty stray dogs that don’t have any foreign breed in them. She’s also a female dog, which made her previous caretaker dump her in our land out of fear that she will make babies. She was thin, dirty, and small. Nobody
“A tree can not grow up in isolation” – Masanobu Fukuoka These are simple guidelines for polyculture planting to increase biodiversity. Mixing these 3 “types” ensures the most amount of benefit in time and space. It all starts with the 3 No’s: No plowing, tilling, cultivation, nor herbicides. No chemical nor organic fertilizers. No chemical
We survived the dry season, but sadly a few trees did not. In the dry season, it rained only once every 4 to 6 weeks. And altho I mulched the trees thickly some died. Most of the trees that died were trees that I planted at the very end of the rainy season, so these
Plants are the primary producers Plants among all beings of the Earth have the unique position that they can receive their energy externally from the planet Earth. Namely the Sun, the center of our solar system. All the other non-photosynthetic beings must take their energy from other beings. This is why plants are considered primary
Some people believe that farming is for families. When you think about homesteaders or farmers, they almost always are a family. This is really troubling me. Why? Because I believe Farming is for everyone. Let me tell you something I saw on Facebook that made me sad. There’s a Facebook farming (permaculture) group that I
No natural farming blog is complete without the famous seed balls. I have experimented for quite some time with many different seed ball methods. I even tried to make a seed ball machine similar to a concrete mixer to make seed balls, but the seed ball machine sadly did not work as expected. So far
