A Victorious Week for Permaculture!

Helping my family and friends do permaculture projects brought so much joy to me! It was a busy and tiring week, but I wanna do it again!!!

Feb. 7 - Re-designing our San Pablo home garden for organic vegetable production with Mommy and a quick trip to Ato Belen's Farm to buy some compost and vermicast.

 Feb. 6 - Permaculture design workshop and consultation for our friends, Melanie and Hindy of Holy Carabao, in Waldorf School, Sta. Rosa.

Feb. 5 - Delivering the veggies from Kainos Farm to the packing area at Cafe Antonio, LB. Dan, Maya, and Turo of Nu Wave Farmers prepared 20 veggie baskets while Paulo and Akim from Bay brought their produce.

Feb. 5 - Harvesting veggies with Charlene (Good Food Community) at Kainos Farm for the Nu Wave Farmer's CSA in Los Banos

 Feb. 4 - Good Food Community's 100th delivery in Metro Manila yey!

Feb. 1 - First Good Food Sundays of 2015!

 

My Personal Goals for 2015

1) Revive the Daang Kalabaw Community Garden project. With a new gardener who comes once a week, we will supply our small apartment compound with veggies once again! The veggies are basically free, the neighbors and I just barter for goods.

2) Adopt-a-Plot program at Kainos Farm. After a year of trial and error, we are now ready to share our plots with you! For a minimum rental fee, you can plant 2-3 crops on your 25 square foot plot.

3) Farmers’ Market at Cafe Antonio. Right now it’s every Thursday but the plan for this year is to have it everyday. In cooperation with Nu Wave Farmers and Good Food Community. We're waiting for a semi-permanent pop-up spot near the parking lot of Cafe Antonio. 

4) Finish the Learning and Accreditation program for Good Food Community. And have Foodstock!!! I also hope we can find more subscribers and supply many food establishments. 

5) Supply the Nu Wave Farmers CSA program by February. 

‪#‎Go2015‬
 
http://www.organicbackyardthinking,blogspot.com
  Good Food Community | Good Food Sundays | Nu Wave Farmers | Kainos Farm | The Health Walk | Cafe Antonio | The Mulching Matsing

Pre-Christmas Farmers' Market at Cafe Antonio (Dec. 22-23)

Harvesting at Kainos Farm early in the morning.

Farmers' Market in the afternoon!

Good Food Community + Nu Wave Farmers Veggie Delivery in Elbi

Paulo and Jabez picks up veggies in Cubao (via Good Food Community via Capas, La Trinidad and Bauko) and brings em to Elbi.

Nu Wave Farmers Turo, Maya and Dan helps in the packing of different veggie bayong sets. Most subscribers in Elbi ordered a salad pack. 

The bayongs are delivered to the hubs.

Post-veggie delivery meeting at one of the hubs, Satya Graha.

Photos courtesy of Paulo, Dan, and Liezl

The Kainos Farm Transformation GIF

From unproductive vacant lot to lush vegetable garden in less than a year (February to October 2014)! 

Restore the Earth. Change the World with Food.

Society has grown so detached from the food that they put into their mouths that they would rather pay more for material things that give them pleasure rather than nourishment. Food is packaged...heated...and served in a plastic wrapper. It’s in every corner of the street. It’s in every sidewalk. Every bus stop. Buy-One-Take-One burger stands are everywhere. Food is omnipresent. 

I don’t know why the same fast food chain needs to have three branches in one small town. I guess “marketing strategy” is the new term for greed. 

Why can’t we make a stand and demand for healthy food? Why is health of least importance when so many people are sick? Food, the environment, and our health (and economics!), it all belongs to one conversation. Actually, it should be one word: foodenvironmenthealth(andeconomics!). 

Today is the day that we start to do things differently.

Most of you see me gardening and farming on Facebook. That’s because I’ve been practicing organic agriculture for 2 years now, blame it on the UP Open University’s Organic Agriculture program. I grow vegetables without any chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilizers or even heavy machinery. 

It’s just ecology and hard work.

Fast forward to today, I’m now working for Good Food Community--a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) group that helps smallholder organic farmers in far-flung places find stable markets in the city. 

I decided to join Good Food Community because I always believed in an alternative food production system where consumers actually know (and trust!) the people who grow their food, farmers are paid fairly and vegetables are grown organically. Which translates to creating meaningful relationships while having a stable livelihood and taking care of the environment--a concept that’s so alien nowadays in this individualistic, resource-hungry and efficiency-obsessed economy. 

How does CSA work?

By paying upfront, the farmers get the necessary capital to start their farm operations without throwing punches in the air and walking blindly in the dark--planting randomly and hoping that someone will buy their vegetables. CSA guarantees the farmers a sure market because people (or shareholders in CSA jargon) “invest” in the farm and share in the risk of the whole operation. Now it’s up to the farmers that they deliver top notch healthy produce. That’s where we step in.

Obviously, these backyard farmers don’t stand a chance against heavily-funded, large-scale conventional farms that supply a vast network of supermarket chains and public markets where 99.99% of people buy their fresh produce. 

Just like the smallholder farmers which do more for less (organic agriculture is hard because man messed up the environment), stakeholders also struggle because they pay more for less (because organic produce costs more than cheap, pesticide-happy veggies)...for now. 

Today is the day that we start to do things differently.

Click “Be a Stakeholder” and Change the World with Food today.

Watch the Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_iPv91pxxQ
Visit: http://www.goodfoodcommunity.com

Ecological Consciousness Article Featured in Greenpeace Philippines Website

I started my small organic herb and vegetable garden in front of my apartment in mid-2012 with the simple goal of growing pesticide-free vegetables for me and my family. Like any novice backyard gardener, I wanted to find out first if I had a “green thumb”--that is, if I was capable of growing any plant at all!
Curious, innocent, and very excited , I sowed tomato seeds directly on a small 1x4 plot I cleared right in front of my porch. Every night after work , I would check if the seeds have sprouted. After a few days, I finally saw signs of life. And yet the excitement was cut short when the midday sun started to bake the soil while the heavy July rains hammered the plot in the afternoons continuously. Maybe direct-sowing was wrong. That was my initial reaction. And so I started planting in pots and containers and placed net bags over it to protect it from the heat and the heavy rains. When the seedlings reached a certain height, I transplanted them into the tilled plots.
This simple system of planting worked for me until the end of the year. I was able to harvest a decent amount of vegetables considering my limited experience in gardening. Thinking that I could just repeat what I did the following year, I started to expand my garden. Unfortunately, 2013 turned out to be a very wet and rainy chapter. 

Climate Change and the Backyard Gardener 

For the average person, the daily effects of climate change is usually experienced through increased personal discomfort and inconvenience brought about by extreme heat and heavy rains. But for the backyard gardener, climate change means more than just discomfort or inconvenience. Gardening and growing vegetables heighten one’s sensitivity and awareness to climate change because crop yield depends largely on the weather condition.
Focusing on individual crop protection and health, like the installation of net houses or greenhouses, are temporary solutions to reducing the harsh effects of climate change on backyard gardens. But the backyard gardener must realize that he or she has a larger role to play far beyond feeding one’s own families and beautifying the landscape.
As I read books and studied about gardening, I stumbled upon a concept called “permaculture.” Permaculture is a design system and a philosophy that encourages the backyard gardener to observe nature and work with it rather than against it while capturing and storing as much energy as he can. Having this in mind, I began observing how the elements within my garden interacted and responded with the larger ecosystem in which it is a part of.

Observations

I spent most of 2013 just observing how my garden “worked” as a system. It’s all about planning and identifying patterns and the beneficial relationships of different elements or components and the roles they play in building a resilient and productive backyard garden.
Trees provide shade and protection while softening the effects of strong winds and harsh sunlight. Mulch retains moisture in the soil and helps build organic matter. Some weeds provide a habitat for beneficial insects. Herbs keep pests at bay. Goats provide nitrogen-rich manure and control weed growth.
By taking note of observations such as these, the backyard gardener will be able to design an efficient garden based on judgments made with an ecological consciousness. When the backyard gardener understands these relationships, he allows his landscape to be more responsive to the unpredictable behavior of the environment rather than just building a man-made landscape patch that counteracts natural processes.  

An Ecological Consciousness

Ever wondered why forests can withstand typhoons and intense heat? It’s because nature has its own way of restoring and regenerating itself. It’s our job to observe these natural processes and try to enhance them—not alter them—to  provide what we need.
My gardening style is more horticultural rather than agricultural.  In agriculture, tracks of land are stripped bare and tilled to make way for the planting of single crops. This leaves the landscape vulnerable to natural disasters and pest infestations. Call it horticulture, agroforestry, or permaculture, whatever the design or the philosophy is, expect the garden, at first glance, to look like a mess if we base it on modern lawn and garden design standards. It is by letting nature take its course, allowing weeds to grow and producing as much organic matter by using energy stored in manure and dried leaves, that one can truly appreciate the capacity of nature to heal itself. This we have to reckon with, deserving our utmost respect.
The key to a successful backyard garden is to restore rather than manipulate. In the long run, altering and manipulating the landscape would make the effects of climate change more prominent and more destructive. As scientists continue to debate whether climate change is a natural occurrence or man-made, its harsh effects would definitely be diminished if we garden with an ecological consciousness.

Source: http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/ph/News/greenpeace-philippine-blog/backyard-gardening-and-climate-change/blog/50860/