Want to hear a story?
I was given a piece of land by my father in law just over 20 years ago.
In my estimation it was (and still is) a beautiful piece of land.
From this view you can see my property going down to the treeline at the bottom of a gently sloping hill. (about 500m)
From this view you can see my property going up to the top of the hill (almost).
That's my wife and father-in-law 20 years ago.
Plans
Well, once I got the piece of land I just had to come up with a plan for it.
I'm going to ping a few people to see if my ideas were reasonable or not:
@monica-ene because you know about farming in tough conditions
@miztajovial because you also know about farming in tough conditions.
@anttn because maybe you have thoughts on if I had bad ideas on soil reuvenation.
Anyways,
It was an odd shaped piece of land being almost 500m long but only 15m wide (my piece) or 45m wide if you include my brother/sister in law (who have 15m each, one on the right and one on the left).
As you can tell from the picture the land wasn't being used for very much. The cows go through and grab what little grass they can. Unfortunately the land had been intensively farmed for many years. Those years took their toll due to erosion (no trees on a sloping area) and depletion of nutrients from the crops.
My father-in-law told me that when he first started planting corn they were as tall as him and grew easily. He said that now if he was to plant corn it would barely come up to his knee without fertilizer.
I needed a plan.
How would I develop the land to rejuvenate it?
How would I develop it to provide food for myself and others?
How would I develop the land to increase the beauty for myself and those around?
Here is what I wanted to do with the land:
- Plant a "living fence" around the property
Rationale: A living fence wouldn't require maintenance. Also the roots of the living fence could help hold the soil and enrich it if they were from a leguminous tree. Also the leaves could be food for animals running around the property.
- Plant Leguminous trees such as Ipil Ipil (leuceana), madre de cacao, and Moringa throughout the property.
Rationale: Each of these trees has roots which can both hold the soil and prevent erosion. They are legumes which means they add nitrogen to the soil. The leaves are also high in protein/nutrition so can be used as feed for goats.
- Place a borehole / deepwell at the top of the property.
Rationale: Water is absolutely essential to anything growing. If there is a pumpwell at the top of the property then the water provided could be used to get water all over the property simply by gravity.
- Place three residence on the property side by side.
Rationale: One home for each landowner. It's good to have neighbors you can trust and having my sister and brother as neighbor seems like a good idea.
- Have either goats or sheep on the property.
Rationale: Animals eating leaves and grasses are great for mobilizing nutrients around the soil. Crucial for revitalizing the land.
- Place rainwater collection and solar panels on top of the homes to collect water and electricity.
Rationale: Need water and electricity to live. Nice to make them on site and not have to worry about putting up electricity poles.
Plans vs Reality
I liked my ideas. They made sense to me. I tried very hard to get my family on board with gettings things done but in the end things just didn't go the way I had hoped.
What I wanted:
Plant a living fence.
.... but I got a barbed wire fence around a small portion at the top of the land.
Plant leguminous trees to replenish the soil
.... but my family decided coconut and mango would be a better choice.
Drill a deep well at the top of the property
.... they didn't want to walk to the top of the property so they drilled in the middle of it.
Place three residences side by side
.... I got a single residence instead.
Have goats or sheep to graze the property
.... My father brings his cows through occasionally but no-one wanted to look after animals. Plus goats and sheep can't graze on coconut or mango.
Rainwater and solar panels?
.... No attempt at rainwater collection. The small sample solar system I gave them to try got put into a cupboard and ignored. Spent long enough time in the dark and the battery pack died from lack of use.
Needless to say I was not particularly happy with the overall progress after the first few years. Which led me to a conclusion.
I Needed a caretaker!
I knew that if I was ever going to get things done the way I wanted. Or at least even close to how I wanted them I was going to need someone to live on the land.
At least at this point I had a very basic home. It was structurally solid and had a pumpwell for water. There was no electricity (which was sad) and no plumbing (which would be a problem) but if I could hire someone to look after the property perhaps together we could get things developed.
It sounded like a good idea to me.
- Hire a caretaker
- Let the caretaker live on the land
- Listen to the caretaker's needs for development
- Pay for those needs to be taken care of.
- Have a place that would be ready to go in a decade or two when I would retire.
Unfortunately my family kept saying "We can do it" and "Don't hire anyone". For years they insisted they could take care of it. However, over time it became obvious that a caretaker was needed but when they gave me the OK and I finally tried to hire someone I couldn't find anyone to take the job. Being so far away no-one really believed it would be a real job and that they would get paid. So, I had the money, had the dream to get things working but no-one to do the work.
If you will keep reading you'll understand why I really wanted a caretaker.
Things went wrong
While this isn't an exhaustive list of the things that have gone wrong over time...I'll give you an idea of how things just didn't work.
The Pumpwell.
What could go wrong with a pumpwell?
It is fairly simple, right? Pipe in the ground to bring up water.
Except in the middle of the night thieves came to steal the pipe from the ground. All the work to pay for the material and workers just to have them steal the pipe for a little bit of money for scrap.
The Rebar
Now I wanted to have a home made out of sandbags like this one:
but something like that was just too odd for the Filipino builders. Instead they built with concrete. As such I was hoping to get a second story but insisted on one story to start.
After one story was built I was going to ask them to make a second story. Then I found out that wasn't going to be possible. Why not?
In the middle of the night someone went onto the roof with a hacksaw. They cut all the rebar from the top of the home in order to sell for scrap metal value.
Seriously Who steals rebar from the top of a building under construction.
The house foundation.
Now when I asked to build the house I asked them to level a part of the hill and then build on a flat foundation. Sounds pretty basic, right?
Nope. For some reason they put in a number of concrete pillars for the foundation and build a flat foundation without levelling the ground. The result is that the back of the home is sitting on the ground. The front of the home is a meter off the ground sitting on concrete pillars with an empty space underneath.
What happens with a nice, protected, shady space under a home? I ended up with termites under there (yuck).
The coconut problem.
I wasn't really happy when I heard that my family had planted coconuts on the property. That didn't really fit my image of rejuvenating the soil. However, things went from disappointing to downright weird.
You see a coconut seedling looks a bit like this.
Pretty simple, right? Just bury that guy in the ground, give it water and nutrition and end up with a coconut tree.
Except a lot of them were planted. They all started looking healthy but after a couple of weeks they all started dying. My in-laws were a little perplexed because normally coconut are fairly easy to grow. To find the cause they dug up one of the coconuts.
Someone had gone, dug up the coconut, stole the coconut seed and replaced the stem on top. Again I was in disbelief. Who goes and steals a coconut seed?
At least the mango grew.
That was a small bright side. I really enjoy mango and they grow into tall majestic trees. I could live with some nice mango's to look out of from my front window.
Source: Istockphoto
Ah... a happy mango seedling. Except as they were growing my family hired someone to weed around the trees. We expected them to pull the weeds from around the tree so it could continue to grow. Instead they decided to weed the area by using a flamethrower and burned everything around the area, including the trees.
Seriously???
Anyways, I could go on and on about the neverending parade of weird stuff. Little things like "Buy a chicken to eat the termites"...that didn't end well....no termites got eaten by a chicken but I think a sorceror was hired to get rid of the bad spirits/black dwarves.
Then there was when all the electrical wiring was stolen from the tubing in the concrete walls.
Or when the ants and spiders came to infest the house.
..... but I think you get the idea.
After 20 years I still have a concrete bunker type house which gets used regularly when a typhoon comes because its the most solid structure around. My parents love the cool breeze from its porches and the high thermal mass of the concrete means it stays nicely cool. But no electricity...still. The pumpwell has been replaced (hopefully no more stolen pipes) but it is still in the wrong position on the property.
....and even trying to get someone in to finish the project has proven ... impossible.
20 Years of struggling. Now I'm much older and soon to retire. No orchards to look at. No 20 year old trees to enjoy. No rejuvenated soil to plant in.
I'll have to do the work myself as a retirement job when all I really wanted to do was to settle down and enjoy it in my old age.
But Hive may be an answer to how things should have been
After 20 years of frustration I've had many questions on what happened. Did I have unreal expectations? Is this just something that happens in developing nations? Were my family just standing in the way of development? Was technology just not up to the task of getting things done over the years?
Once I saw Hive and its ability to get information out quickly. It's ability to transfer money quickly. I thought about how much I wish I had this back 20 years ago. However, I'll write about that in my next post. This post is getting a little long.
Hope you read that post also!
Thanks for reading.