Home Sweet Homestead

This update has been a long time coming and that time has passed faster yet than the times before - I do feel like I am repeating myself at the start of every post, but it truly is fascinating how various stages and phases can speed up or slow down time so perceptively - or quite the opposite, if you know what I mean. 

Take the last few days, for instance, Mo left for Puerto to buy a bike (rolling my eyes and shaking my head) and I have been holding down the fort on my own - lots to do and getting a lot done. And yet the days just don't seem to go by quite as quickly as usual...

So let me start off with sharing our joy that we finally have a more-or-less fully functional house that we are now not only living in, but also feeling liveable in and enjoying. Ok, so it doesn’t have actual walls or doors or anything, but who needs those anyways. 

And as any homeowner knows, this is where the fun really begins. From the day we started tinkering, we knew we would probably never stop.

Without further ado…

Straight from (No)Town&(Pure)Country ;)

On one of our big city trips to Puerto Princesa...

Our bodega

Our kitchen floor.

The Roots Farm Homestead! Taaa-daaa!

With flower beds, rain tarp upstairs and our bamboo blinds...

A beauty, isn’t it? And all this living-in-the-middle-of-nature, open and airy, native (aside from the cement floor and counter) thing we call home now wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of our construction team as well as the family and friends who have contributed ideas, time and hands. A round of applause for them, please!

Our first volunteers (my cousin and girlfriend) attacking our kitchen "wall".

One of the last home improvements by our construction crew - kitchen cabinets!

The finishing touches will still take some time, but some paint has been applied, some curtains hung and some herb beds constructed. 

Christina using leftover wood to tie up an herb bed...

...which we later filled with soil, mulched and planted...

...and, because it was delightful, made a second one right away.

Painting and planting.

More painting - the only paint in the entire house, btw.

A great big thanks to the hard work they put in!

To start off our tour - climb the stairs that wind up our hill....

The bamboo spiral shower has since been surrounded with alugbati (malabar spinach) which is happily going to climb and engulf it.

From this...

...to this. 

Showering surrounded by bamboo, greenery and the open sky. 

Our compost toilet is also open for business, though we are still working on the comfort level and overall system in there – but it works (and doesn’t stink, for those curling your noses right now)!

Tucked away in the bamboo.

Our throne.

We now also have a beautiful banana circle, which has gone from freshly planted to a green oasis in this short period of time. Fed with our kitchen scraps, weeds from landscaping and the water from the shower, laundry and kitchen, it is a mean green nature machine!

Greening...

...supporting its first weeks...

...and now happily composting, filtering and growing.

Finally, another glorious addition and life improving addition to our homestead was the installation of our solar system – three 100Watt panels, some outlets and lights. What a difference some power can make! No more sudden darkness because the solar lamps didn’t charge enough, no more hasty laptop turn-on-work-quickly-turn-off sessions, no more wondering how many bugs you’ve cooked and consumed because you can’t really see it all that well (now we actually see how many bugs we eat!). Amazing. And the occasional series or movie to wind down in the evening aren’t too bad either…

Water is life - but light is comfort. We now have a comfortable life!

After water and our equivalent of plumbing, after light... it was time for some interiors. Up until a few weeks ago, we sat on our steps, stairs, mats or the floor and had the kitchen counter as only table top in the house. We were in dire need for some furniture. Befitting our theme, we had some items made in Puerto Princesa and were positively beaming when they found their place in our home...

Here’s a visual tour of the interior of our humble bahay kubo deluxe:

Leon proof reading my blog post.

The living "room"...

...and it's view into the never-ending garden.

The dining "room"...

...connected to our kitchen.

From which there is an equally spectacular view onto the never-ending garden.

So many views, so little walls. You may have noticed, the bottom floor is quite exposed. So for the option to play (real) house and create an actual room, we had bamboo blinds made of buho (a thin, very fast and vastly growing bamboo found everywhere here) installed.

Buho blinds.

Did I mention the view? Well this dead tree is the center piece of our garden and the reason we ended up on this beautiful hill. Before we started building, we walked around the property and, amidst a jungle of bamboo, I saw these top branches sticking out. The rest is history - we machete-d our way through the thick growth, noticed we were at a slight elevation and blindly decided to start clearing the site.

Thank you, dead tree.

Started working on the landscaping ever since the rains begun. Now it’s all about mission green hilltop, about getting down and dirty, digging stuff up and planting what we like, want and need.

The perks of lots of digging - long forgotten cassava tubers, hidden all over the garden.

After a days long battle with thick bundles of buho roots - gotta dig deep or they just keep coming back.
Also, this is a more accurate depiction of us in our day to day
- sweaty, with some sort of tool in our hand and covered in mud.

And what would a farm homestead be without some furry roommates. Leon, our feisty little lion-wannabe, moved in a week before our daydreaming Jack Russell pup Mona. I had it all planned out in my head – those two will become bestest best friends, just like in the movies. And though the first week seemed like that would just stay a hollywood dream… A very nervous Leon would just hiss and spit and growl at good-natured Mona, who was really just trying to get a little closer. However, by now, they “play” – meaning chase each other around the garden. But it’s all much friendlier and has given me back my hope of having these two rascals buddying up one day - the more they play with each other, the less our attention is demanded. Funny thing though, I can definitely tell that there is a bit of jealousy and possessiveness going on when it comes to our attention and love. I sometimes feel like I’m taking care of a brother and sister – both in their terrible twos ;)

Tiger mode.

Nap time.

Good morning, are you looking for your slippers?

Best friends?

...only in their dreams. For now.

In Farming News…

Our water systems are more or less set up, though the drip irrigation for our green house (yay!) is still in need of some tweaking. Our well is cemented and due to the rains – more in the hills behind us than here on our land, but we’ll take it for now – the level is nice and high.

 Our well.

Mo has stared playing around with microgreens and his first try and tray did look promising – until the chickens found it and a sudden blast of summer sun fried what was left of them. But I guess there’s a learning curve to everything – no chickens near mircogreens and too much heat is bad. Noted.

Happy and hopefull.

After chickens and heat.

The once empty greenhouse now lives up to his name and is truly GREEN.

My mom and Tay invested a lot of hard work into getting the greenhouse to where it is now…

The green thumb working her magic.

Empty beds,

Empty nursery.

Sprouting...

...lots of sprouting...

Baby malunggay (moringa) trees.

Random baby plants filing the nursery.

Composting like pros by now.

Plant food. Potassium in the form of dried and ground up banana peels.

A roof against the summer heat.

The pumpkin happily crawling.

The beans climbing.

The bed of randoms - I actually don't really know what is growing here.
And the others don't either.

Nursery.

Tree babies. Acacia and citrus. 

Kulitis - a local type of spinach - enjoying the drip irrigation. 

We do however have a bit of a bug problem – ants attack the flowers which are supposed to turn into vegetables and caterpillars are feasting on anything leafy. Yet another learning curve to curb… We are using EM5 and soapy water for now and occasionally smoking the greenhouse. Further measures will be taken - we have ordered neem oil and are looking into BT - a type of bacteria that takes care of those pesky little gluttons. 

Caterpillar feasting on anything green and leafy.

With the onset of the occasional downpours, we can finally start thinking about the outside of the greenhouse - plant what thrives in the local conditions, do some earthworks and start preparing for the heavier rains. This includes digging canals behind the buildings and planting as much vetiver as we can squeeze along there to hold the soil, drink the water and thus protect from erosion. 

We have also added a house around the vermicompost due to some instances of a skunk getting in a feasting on our precious nightcrawlers. 

 And we are starting to culture some azola - also known as duck weed or mosquito ferns. It will become part of our green fertilisers and hopefully feed some ducks one day.

Water beds for azola, a house for the worms and a canal lined with vetiver grass. 

Changing Seasons

Earlier than usual, the rainy season seems to have started. The stream gets fuller by the day and Bianca the carabao is loving her daily swimming excursions. The green is returning to the brown and burnt land around us and farmers have been surprised with the plowing and planting that calls to them. It’s gone from hot and dry to hot and humid and the wind is still not quite sure from which direction it is coming. It’s a transition and with it comes another new season we have not yet experienced here. A season which will – for sure – be a battle against the elements up here in our open house on the hill. It will test and try us – How wet will we get? How much wind can this roof take? How many more mosquito bites can my body accommodate? Which creepy crawly creatures will join us? Which tree will win the race to reach our roof? How much greener can it get?

But it suits us well. This whole first year here will be a transition for us and I myself still feel it every single day. When I crave for something only a big fancy air-conditioned supermarket could provide. When I wouldn’t mind to close a door once in a while. When my feet crave a paved path or closed shoes or just being clean for once. When I have to endure another sunrise/sunset bug bite attack and even antihistamines can’t cure this constant state of itchiness. When we miss friends and family and the place we used to surround ourselves with them.

Those thoughts come and go, sometimes they linger, sometimes they’re just a fleeting moment, like a blink of an eye. Most of the time, there are too many other thoughts that need tending too – thoughts I never had to have in my apartment in Berlin. Did I turn on the solar charge controller this morning? Are the trees we planted yesterday getting enough water? Are the canals we dug going to overflow with the next rain? What the hell am I going to do with the trash when the sack is full? When was the last time I emptied the urine? Is this large and angry insect going to bite me and where can I run to so it won’t? It’s raining, quick, close the blinds! When was the last time I ate beef? Where is the dog/cat? If I have x amount of drinking water left, when do I have to drive to El Nido to refill it? Well, if the sun is up then I guess I am too (5:30am at the moment)… It’s a different life. No better or worse at the moment. Just different. In way. Another home. Palawan is home. A home in transition.

It’s those other thoughts, that we would be having no matter where we am, that will make or break this amazing and intense experience we are having right now… What’s next? What’s the plan, man? Is the time right? Is the place right? Is the current situation right? Is our plan right? And it is up to us to flip that switch turning on the green light… :)