2012 Redevelopment Parcel 6 Batu 11

Year 2012 shall be Redevelopment. We are moving back to our start up point and this time we shall do things all over again, basing on the data acquired. Through this inductive action, we shall improve on things there were done initially and add on things that was not done. We shall start with Parcel (Rubber) that has the easiest access.

Parcel 6 Batu 11, planned to do a weeding session soon. Waiting for a dry window for us to do a herbicide spray followed by a fertilizing run. Traditionally January & February we should be having low average rain fall, but the rain are still being carried forward. We had already added lots of Banana trees, some Avocado and Breadfruit trees ending December. This Parcel was started in July 2011 and there is not much idle land here, as those remainder as very steep, towards the creek in the middle and a valley with water run off to the same creek. Redevelopment here shall most probably be very slow, estimating running to 4 to 5 years as we need to "reclaim" back the land feet by feet. It has to be done with manual labor as it's too steep for the bulldozer to move in.
Estimated harvesting of Bananas should begin 3rd quarter of this year, in time for year end. Breadfruit 2 to 3 years, Rubber 3.5 to 4.5 years and Avocado 4 to 6 years down the road. A small quantity of groundnuts shall be ready around March but shall be kept as seeds for future corps. We shall also work on the in-between terrace, hope to plant some mid term crops here. The feedback from our neighbor (planted his rubber trees here 6 years ago) that he has tested lots of short term crops with no success. Hope we have better luck. Outlook for Parcel 6 for year 2012 shall be negative as with the targeted harvest of Banana during the 3rd quarter may not be sufficient to cover for the expenses for the whole year. We therefore need to work out some successful short term crops here. Let's see what we can come out with.

Ending Year 2011

Year 2011 had just ended and am reflecting on the progress so far, since taking over the management  in October. This was a very challenging period as I need to learn up agriculture, management in agriculture and marketing our produce in a very short time. Being away from love ones, had some toll on me too. Thankfully  I have all the support from my love ones, family members as well as partners. Even though it was a bit stressful, this is a rare opportunity to have a 'crash course' hands-on experience.

Had done up and documented the Smart Partnership Joint Venture Agreement with our partners to work on these lands, developing it to a rubber plantation. Agreement for Parcel 1, 2 & 6 had been signed. Awaiting the return of Agreement for Parcel 3. These agreement map out the responsibility, expectation of all partners so as we can progress and move ahead with a streamline and focused direction. Being a long term project, that may last up to 25 years this also provides a continuity in terms of administration.

Am in the final stages of getting the work pass for our Indonesian helpers. This permit is for 3 years and we are doing it without the help of agents in order to save cost. Agents charge a fee of $1,400 to $1,800 per head.

Accessed all the land area of all Parcel, identified areas that we can still develop. I find there are still plenty of potential in all the Parcel. Making plans to expand the coverage as by increasing the planting density, as it shall contribute more during harvesting. Shall start with those that have the easiest access area. Parcel 1 & 6, followed by 3 then 2. Parcel 7 is still under the land dispute and shall have to wait till it's sorted out.

The trials conducted is almost done and had identified some short/mid/long term crops that we can plant and market. Groundnuts, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tapioca and corn are the short term corps. Banana shall be the main mid term crop as it can be grown on all the Parcels. Long term crops are mostly fruits trees like Avocado and Sukun (Breadfruit). We had also finish conducting our marketing studies on these crops.

Am grateful that I had learn a lot these few months, which shall be put to full use this year. Had also build a strong working relation with helpers as well as partners. Morale and commitment had a big boost especially from our helpers. Year 2012, shall catch up and further our initial progress. Year 2012 shall be our year of Redevelopment.

Parcel 5 Our Small Farm

Month of December, on set of the monsoon season. Our pool had been filled to the max, had to dig an overflow drain to relieve some flooded area. Algae had grown in our pool as we did not use the water much. The fishes that we had thrown in had also grew in quantity. Bought some fish feeds, but unfortunately all were eaten by the dogs. Have to store it securely the next time. Thankfully we had harvested our green vegetable patch as two raised beds were flooded. Our losses were minimal, mostly due to diseases, insects & predator outbreak because on the rainy season.

Our inter-crop of groundnuts & eggplant to the failed sweet corn is growing well. The leafs of the sweet corn indicate most probably that there is magnesium deficiency here. Was told that sweet potatoes grows well in this area. Am planing to convert this area to plant banana and inter-crop with legumes. Work shall start in stages once we had finish harvesting the present crops here.

Clearing a small area to try planting some seedlings of bottle gourd that we obtained from a friend. Those pumpkins that we planted here did not grow well. Not sure if it's the soil condition or due to the drought. We had since pipe in an automatic sprinkle here. Hopefully these shall do better. Need to set up some fixture for it to climb soon.
Had also planted some banana here. Since it takes about 6 ~ 12 months for the banana to bear fruits, we should be able to harvest the bottle gourd, then do another round of legumes.

 The Long beans are growing well. Shall need to string up in a week or so. We had readied the bamboo pole when we planted the seeds. The bamboo where cut from the wild, not far from our farm. We had only started to use these wild bamboo to save on cost and to reduce waste. Thinking of more uses for the bamboo as they are readily available. Maybe do some fixture for the pumpkins to climb on our later batch.

Or first harvest of pumpkins did not go well. We had some that were eaten most probably by rodents and some were converted to ants nest, due to the rainy season. We only managed about 45 kilos & 55 kilos for the 1st & 2nd batch. Expecting a bigger harvest on the following batch batch. We are keeping all the spoiled pumpkins to be used as seeds.
We are still making changes to our little farm. Have decided to stop the eggplant as the prices had dropped too low and we still had not fare well on this plant. Shall move on to other crops which we have a better experience.
We have at the moment the following crops here. Banana, Chilli, Eggplant, Okra, Pumpkins, Kangkung, Sayur Manis, Mini Tomato, Bentong Ginger, Yam, Papaya, Avocado, Sweet Potato, Sweet corn, Groundnuts, Long beans, Bottle gourd, Jack fruits, Serai & Sukun.

A Day At Parcel 6

We started off early as with previous visit as we are doing some rubber tapping. The yield is higher if tapped in the early morning due to the cooler weather (the latex coagulate slower). We can not take it to the max as these are only for trials. Tapping should be done before daylight (anytime after 1 am) and fixed to a regular time. Our helpers also found that we have to make a thicker cut, as opposed to the fine cut. Reason is that we do not tap these trees on a regular basis. I noticed that the leaves are falling for this area. Shall monitor how long it last. Our neighbor at the rear had stopped tapping due to the leave fall, they had turn the collection cup over to prevent water storage. We had a higher yield than the previous visit.
We had finished planting banana trees for the half lots. Today we planted more than 100 banana trees. Hoping to have a bounty of harvest. With a combined harvest, we hope it shall be feasible to ship it to the city for a higher value.

A check on the ground nuts shows goo results. Estimate maybe more than 90 % germinated. Ground nuts required low Nitrogen fertilizer, otherwise it shall form less nuts. We applied Chicken dung this time as we want the vegetative growth first, also we did side dress with a higher dosage as most probably is the only time we are fertilizing it.

Could only find 4 pumpkins germinated from our second seeding. Wondering what gone wrong wrong.
Check on those first seeding, was surprise that we found more, some had just germinated, having only 2 to 4 leafs. 
Am suspecting that the seed are hibernating and would not germinate due to insufficient moisture / water. This area did not experience much rain lately. Another option, we could try germinating, and transplant, buy with no water at site, the new plants might die off due to drought. Guess we shall wait for another 2 weeks to see if we have more germinates. In the mean time, planning to try other crops like Field Corn and Sweet potatoes, which are more drought resistance. Shall also source for more ground nuts seeds as we had ran out.

This parcel 6 is particularly windy. Most of the rubber plant-lets are blown side ways. Beginning to stake the plants but ran out of strings. Shall have to continue on the next visit. We need to straighten the plants so as to have a straight and clean trunk. This shall provide a bigger tapping area.
Hope to see better results on our next visit.

Big Changes At Our Little Farm

This month we had a big changes to our little farm. One of our pioneering founder had decide to call it a day and opted out. He has rendered us tremendous help in setting our farms, especially parcel 1, 2 and 3. We couldn't had start off without him.

I had currently stepped in to take up the challenge of running the set up.  After two years of retirement, getting back to work is rather tiring. On the bright side, I get to do more exercise and am slimming down to I guess maybe 75 kilos. Doing farm work, I should be able to build up my stamina and muscles.

Starting off with Parcel 5, our little 4 acres experimental farm. After lengthy discussion with our helpers, to find out their confidence on the type of crops, and also with the seeds that we still have in our store, we had decided to concentrate on Brinjals, Lady's fingers, Sweet Corn, Chillies and Pumpkins. These shall be our main crops at the moment, as we do not want to be too diversified. We are also salving the existing crops like Avocados, Banana, Nangka, Serai, Ginger, Yam and also some papayas that we had just planted. We are also experimenting with some Bitter gourd, seeds that we already have. I guess we shall save more time salvaging, rather than planting a new. We are also ending our green vegetable runs, by finishing off the maybe 15 beds that we current have due to too low a market price, too much work (labor intensive) and constantly harvesting & replanting. We are shifting from Plant & Plant (plant more, hope many grows and produce) from the previous management to Planting, Caring & Marketing. I guess we were moving forward too fast, planting previously and not spending much time on caring. This new strategy shall emphasis new Planting of crops with less labor intensive, Caring for all existing crops ( watering /insect /disease /fertilizer management) and Marketing so that we are in tune with the market.

 The first two weeks, we had manage to identified the disease and insects attack on our plants. We are glad that we now know at least how to handle it. Once it's under controlled, we shall proceed to experimenting with fertilizing. Being Agriculture, it takes a while to see the results (good or bad) from your testing. We had lots of external help from a good friend Micheal. Moving on to Fertilizing shall include Organic, inorganic and effective microbes. Organic shall be in the form of Chicken dung, with nutrients and trace elements for long term fertilizing. Commercial fertilizer NPK, for faster in soil  fertilization. We are also experimenting with foliar fertilizer. Re-initiating theEffective Microbes that were proven to be very effective. On the marketing, we are targeting the coming Raya, 2nd week of November with some of our produce. Hope to have a sell out.

With these fine tuning, we hope to hit our objective, which is short term, we hope to arrest the negative cash flow by end February 2012. Long term objective is to experiment with crops, learning to plant and take good care of the crops to produce commercial grade harvest, identify the suitable crops and duplicate it at the rubber plantation on a bigger scale. Elevate the standard of living for everyone that is involve in this project. This way we can manifest more life, by producing more food to feed the world.
Stay tune for more updates on the rest of the farms.

Progress on Parcel 5

Sweet Potatoes, these were transplanted a week back via 'cutting' method. We cut lengths of about 7 to 8" and with roots. Plant it on the ground and watered it for the next few days. Some did not made it, but 60% did. This is growing now. Have to weed our the surrounding on the next visit. Once it starts to grow, it's easier to propagate further. We are still looking for the Japanese Potatoes variety.

Couples of frogs made home at our nursery. As it did not affect the germination, we left it be. Tadpoles are growing too. Hope it shall help us eliminate the mosquitoes and other insects. Come to think of it, Frog Farming?

Avocado are fruiting, we have 4 trees here. Shall check again when it's ready to plucking.

A small avocado tree ready for transplanting.

Our lemon grass is growing. These were planted back in March.

We have rows of Lemon grass along our perimeter. Banana too.

Our worker experimenting with Long Beans and French beans.

Our corn for chicken feed.

Our Yams is also progressing well.

A visit to Parcel 1

Parcel 1, my favorite Parcel. This is the Parcel where it all started. Our road /plan for farming. When I was a kid, I dream of having a farm full of banana trees. Parcel 1, the easier accessed (out of the first 3. Our base station here.
A very peculiar tree, growing only vertically with no side brunch at all. Parcel 1 is doing rather well except foe the stolen trees. As Parcel 1 was the first that was planted, the trees in this Parcel are the biggest. Soil at Parcel 1 is also beginning to turn brown, which is good for planting. This shall open other opportunities for us as integrated farming.

Another tall tree, but this was trimmed. Trimming / pruning the lower brunch so that the tree shall grow taller faster, lesser brunch, ease tapping in the future. Time for the next round of fertilizer in June. This time, we shall have to increase the quantity of fertilizing. Hope these tree shall be growing fast.

Other development in Parcel 1 is that the Banana trees that we planted had begin to bear fruits. Once it is harvested, we can start re-planting it's sucklings. Planting more cash crops, it maybe able to supplement our expenses. Shall be planning to plant more Banana trees in Parcel 1, then expand to Parcel 3. We have 4 varieties of Banana, Berangan, Pisang Emas, Cavandish and those that they use to make goreng pisang. Let's hope that we shall have plenty of Banana harvest by next year. We'll need to have more harvest per time as to cover our transportation as our farm is in "off" location.

Our helpers had started to experiment planting of white chillies and it seems to be thriving well. Shall most probably expand on these. This is also a cash crop that can be harvested in a couple of months. Last check the ex-farm price is $ 15 per kilo. Shall be leaving some to ripe to be use as seeds.

Our helpers are also experimenting with groundnuts and seems to be thriving too. Proper planting distance shall be 3 X 4 feet. This shall leave some space for the groundnuts to flower, ripe and drop to the ground. Without space to drop to the ground, no groundnut shall be produce. Let's see how much groundnuts it shall produce. Shall plan after we review the harvest.

Sweet potatoes, a hardy vine type of plant. Can be used as ground covering (preventing weeds ), young leaves as vegetable and the roots for food. We are still looking for the Japanese strain, (purple color skin and purple color roots. Ours now is a mixture of purple color skin, yellow roots and yellow skin, yellow roots.

Our helpers are trying long beans too. We are leaving the beans for seeds.

This is what had became of our failed ginger patch. Shall have to clean up the weeds and find the ginger. I guess just a couple survived.

Our chicken coop. Plant to start a large colony of free range chicken here. Last picture shows some young chillies trees in between the rubber trees.

Updates on plants that we had planted back in March.

The ginger plant had been transplanted successful. We had planted two types, Chinese Ginger and Village ginger. Both looks good after transplanting, but we do have some young plants dying on us, which I guess most probably we could have damage the roots while doing the transplant. Checked on our ginger plant nursery, there are still some ginger plant sprouting, especially from the sawdust covered patch. I did some transplanting few days ago on some new sprouting. I find that the roots had grown into the soil and it makes trans planting difficult. I would propose for our next germination, we shall a 5~6 inches sawdust bedding first, then lay the ginger flat. I think it shall have a higher/faster yield. Had dinged up the deeper ginger, relocated to the top and it's sprouting now.
The groundnut patch is on the upper left of the 1st picture. It's growing well and pretty green. It has started to flowered. Groundnuts shall be produced when the flower withered and drop (bend) down to the ground. There are instance where you see healthy growing plants, but no nuts. Hope that ours shall have big and juicy groundnuts and ginger.

Yam, these are growing well and should be as there were (and still) lots of wild yam before. Yam is easy to plant and do not need much care. We had add another 60+ Yams on the other side of the stream.
Corns, the Thai Super sweet (white maize) is a failure. It's growing so slowly, skinny and not consistent. Some is fruiting, some is not growing, some dying and lots of no growth. Lots of weeds in the area, are doing some weeding but don't think it'll help much. Failure could be lots of possibility as we are planting village style. Guess we shall most probably finish off the left over seedlings and stick to chicken feed corn.

The Chicken feed corn (red color maze) is doing well and growing steadily and consistently. It's growing faster than the weeds and not much care is needed.

Pineapple, surprisingly some are bearing fruits. We had planted about 20 plants, just for testing and maybe create some plant-lets. Guess we shall not buy the pineapple hormone this time as it's the first planting and only a couple is fruiting, hence it's not economical to buy.
This area is a low laying area and has a pool of stagnant water. It drown even the hardy Chicken feed corn. We had dig a drain to drain off excess water. Shall weed off the weeds in a couple of days and have a better picture on what to be done here.
More updates on the progress of the farm in the coming days.