A Red Floor, Some Rice and A Road Trip

They say clocks on the islands run at a different speed. Island time. And though that usually suggests a certain lethargy, a modus that requires a lot of patience, taking it day by day... It seems that for us, things are moving at a speedier-than-expected pace. Days never have enough hours and before we know it, another week (or three) has gone by.  

Finishing Touches and Project Babies

There's hardly any scaffolding left, the roof is on, the floor is in. All that is left are the finishing touches. Some grinding here, some sanding sealer there. Linseed oil is waiting to be applied, to weather proof, stain and shine up our wood. 

We have strayed off our original plan to keep it at purely light materials (just a tiny bit) - the ideas were just too good. A splash of red and a solid workspace. That's all I'm revealing at the moment.

It won't be long now and excitement is growing. 

One of our friends asked the workers when they think our little project will be finished and his answer describes the situation quite well: "I don't really know. It keeps having babies." With all the development going on around El Nido, finding good builders can really set you back. So while we have this group here, we're letting our project reproduce freely (responsibly, of course).

Meetings for dreaming and scheming.

Worksite safety.

Tying instead of tiling.

"Walls"

Stepping stones.

Yet another add-on. 

Mom, the additional labor.

Good work is hard to come by...

...and these guys are good!

Stairway to (our) haven.

Room with a view. 

In Farming News... 

The banana circle from my previous post has settled in and come to life. The banana trees (though not actually a tree, but a perennial herb whose stalks grow from a corm and whose fruits are classified as berries) are pushing out fresh green leaves, the papayas are well rooted and the lemongrass is lively and sprouting, its bundles getting thick and lush... despite the dry season having started! For the first days, we watered it every evening, making sure the mound was nice and moist and the straw mulch still covered it to keep it cool. We then connected it to the staff house by running one pipe from a cemented washing area and one from the sink straight into the circle. From now on, every bath, every load of laundry and every dish washed will contribute to happy plants and continuous composting.

Banana circle in action.

This little fellow is the newest addition to the Roots family. Though his membership has an expiry date. Just as we made pa-dugo before starting construction - sacrificing a chicken to ensure the project would go well - the completion will require some blood to be spilled as well. Sorry little piggy, hope you enjoy your shady tree and abundant meal service till then.

 Cheeky little bugger.

Summer has arrived. The rains have stopped and water is getting scarce. We have had to add some string to our bucket for it to reach the water in our well, but we are lucky it seems to continue to supply enough, despite the larger amount of people using it. Fingers crossed.

Water woes.

With heat comes cashews. The highway smells sweet and sour. Day by day the trees drop more of their juicy fruit. It's hard to keep up with them. You harvest one day and can start all over again the next. The nuts are drying in the sun, the squished and fermenting fruit has filled a drum. And it's far from over. 

In the evenings, people make their trees usok - burning fallen leaves in piles under their cashew and mango trees, urging them to flower more. 

Kasuy.

Pig is enjoying his share of the cashew season as well.

From the seeds our caretaker has randomly stuck in the ground and watered every once in a while, we have squash, eggplant and string beans growing. The squash is small and oddly shaped, the eggplant is growing veeery slowly and the string beans are being eaten by the fire ants and caterpillars before we even have a chance to harvest. But that's nature for ya. With a bit of TLC (and compost, EM, organic pesticides and diatomacious earth...) we will hopefully have the elements working for us soon. 

But for now, hey, stuff is growing and that's pretty cool on its own!

Awkward squash.

Ants stealing our harvest.

It is rice harvesting season on the island and families are busy on their fields. The landscape changes daily, as more and more fields are cropped and chopped. The streets become more narrow, their sides lines with the grain left out to dry. Mornings smell like freshly cut grass and evenings like burning straw. 

Rice paddies. (Not ours, just pretty.)

Rice straw (dayami) however, makes great mulch and the perfect addition to any compost pile, so we ask Tay Charlito to hand some sacks out to his neighbours in his village and the next day we go and pick them up. A win-win situation, since they don't have to burn it and we get free farming materials. 

45 sacks of rice straw.

Unloading.

We too got to take a short trip into the life of a rice farmer, as our little basakan (rice field) in Guinleung was ready to be harvested. Good thing a brand new dirt road had found its way right next to our property - a development we weren't holding our breath for but are all the more pleased about.

4WD parking lot along the new road.

Here's our blow by blow of our half-day (thank god, because our backs are killing us) rice farming adventure...

Cut bundles with a sickle...

...and leave in piles.

Gather piles into larger piles...

...And tie up large piles into bundles with young buri (palm) leaves.

It took two fully loaded trips to get our freshly harvested palay (rice plant/unhusked rice) back to Sibaltan, where it will be further processed - dried, beaten from the rice stalk, dried again and milled. 

In the end, we will be left with a good pile of dayami (straw) for composting and mulching, some ipa (rice hull) and bigas (uncooked rice) - about 50/50 from the palay. 

Just as the Finnish have many different words for snow, because it plays such a large role in their lives, Filipinos use different words for rice, depending on its state. Palay is unhusked, bigas is uncooked, kanin is cooked, lugaw is stewed, tutong is burned, bahaw is left over and sinangag is fried. Rice rice rice rice rice! 

Post-harvest critters coming out to play.

And finally, yet another home was constructed. A home for worms. Vermiculture is composting using creepy crawlies. You keep them happy and healthy and feed them any organic food waste, manure and pretty much anything compostable and harvest the vermicast (in other words, worm poop) every few weeks. Vermicast is very nutrient-rich and perfect for rehabilitating, conditioning and fertilising. It helps soil hold water and promotes healthy root development. Now if that won't fix our awkward squash, I don't know what will ;)

Vermiculture. A bed. For worms.

Friendly Faces, Camping Crew & a Rocky Road Trip

All work and no play is definitely not our mantra - work-life balance, I think, they call it? After camping out with our Tao family for so long, we finally got to invite them over for tour of the grounds, a boodle fight meal and to enjoy the view and breeze.

Our first visitors - the Tao family testing the view. 

Boodle fight!

Construction site chill.

We also had our first few visitors from Germany come by to check out what this whole moving-halfway-around-the-world thing is all about. And in a group of 9 - Tao family, Sibaltan crew and faraway friends - we camped out for the first time. Two floating Tentsiles for our guests and a hammock camp using the posts of our house. 

For the first time, we experienced the elements at night. The sounds that traveled up the hill, animals rustling, people making their way down to the mangroves in the dead of night to fish and the cacophony of birds around sunrise. The wind that blew strong enough to rock us to sleep. And the early morning sunlight that reminded us that we needed to vacate the construction site.  

Buko opening competition. 

The winner and his congratulants.

Hanging out.

Day trippers. More friends that stopped by for a look and a buko.

And after an early morning materials run one day, we took the rest of the afternoon to be out on the water. We now know what island dwellers mean when they say they live by the beach but hardly ever beach. Good thing there are friends that demand to be taken to the beach (fine, we suggested it) ;)

Day off getaway.

In between, there are always little things to be done. A generator that needs fixing (and a guy that needs to learn how to fix generators). Clothes caked in sweat and dust that need washing (and a girl that now physically feels what it means to wash laundry using the well).

Handy men.

Chores. 

And then there's Sundays. The workers go home, the shops are closed (at least in our minds they are). And after hauling around cement, bamboo and rice straw, our Beast needed to have some play time as well. Being on the East coast of the island, we are actually close to Taytay, but the roads that will soon be our fastest route to cheaper materials and the capital are not finished yet. Not that that matters to our Beast... Roooad trip!

Taking the Beast out for a spin.

Exploring the "road" down the east coast.

Finding amazing lookout spots...

...above and beyond Sibaltan.

Exploring the 1667 Fuerza De Santa Isabel in Taytay.

A family that picks-up-seeds-together-in-random-places, stays together.

Cutting and carving for infrastructure.

Our little road trip showed us not only how beautiful the undeveloped side of the island is, but also how quickly things are being moved along when it comes to developing it. The hills are carved to make way for the road, the road is flattened and the cementing is inching forward like one of those worms that you would think is slow but then squirms forward so quickly you can hardly watch where it's going. 

This seems to be the case for most of El Nido and, as we have been finding out bit by bit, it has reached the quiet corner of Sibaltan as well. Unplanned roads, roadside plans. Aside from physically developing our Roots farm, our heads are spinning and our ears are pricked. With every new person we meet and every new connection we make, more information trickles through. We have yet to learn the ways of local government politics, of Barangay (village) workings and how to deal with what we get, give and take. However what we do know, is that the official signed and sealed plans can be duds and the faintest whispers through the grapevines can be fulfilled in an instant - nothing is for sure, nothing is to be underestimated. And the only thing we can do is adapt. And we will. More on that when the whispers become louder and our heads stop spinning :)