Setting up Parcel 6 for execution. Parcel 6 is a hilly land going down a slope, possibly a stream at the bottom and raise up back the opposite hill. The shape is slightly rectangular. This is a failed farm that had been cleared 2 times before. There are also some rubber trees that we think is an encroachment. One side is a new rubber plantation (suspected encroachment). Second side borders a mutual rubber plantation and palm oil plantation. Third side is another mutual rubber plantation. Fourth side is the access road. This picture was taken at the corner of the first and fourth side.
We find this parcel to be easy access as there are already mostly tared road in placed, even thought it's not maintained fully. Only the last few Kilometers (maybe 3) are clay road. Since it's a failed farm, almost all big trees had been cleared, which translate to some savings for us. Our immediate priority now is to locate the marker stones, we found 1, still need to find the other 5 (comprising of 2 lots, total 6 markers). We shall need to verify the encroachment and if true, sort it out with our neighbor. We had planned to locate all the markers and mark again with a pole, painted with bright colors. This shall ease the clearing and terracing of the land. Had already fixed up with the clearing contractor who has some bulldozer nearby, ETA 1st week August. We plan to built a worker's quarter and a store on the fourth side (access road side). Confirmation of seedlings need to be done on August. We intend to go for high yielding clones. Once clearing has started, we intend to start planting. We plan to finish off latest end of December. Lets hope that all goes well.
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Water is very important in agriculture. Never take it for granted. When we started our farm, we went on to check out the creek with some neighbors, and were told that it never dries up. This creek runs across our farm diagonally. We also did a pipe-in water from the hills quite a distant away with a 50 mm hdpe pipe. Things were running well up till end July. We had converted 1 acres (out of 4) to plant vegetables that requires lots of water daily. While expanding the 1 acre, the dry spell came and it did not rained for a period of 3 weeks. The small creek start to dry up. We estimated the volume of input from the creek is not sufficient for our use. Our first option is to use our pipe-in water. As it was from quite a far distance, and incidentally there were some road works and water pipe laying works being carried out at the same time. These cause plenty of disruption on the pipe-in water supply. It was unreliable. We had up to 6 days without pipe-in water. This cause quite a numbers of seedlings to died off. Those that survive are stunt, and have difficulty of recovering. Our second option was to save whatever possible and we use our water sparingly. We then engaged a tractor to dig three wells along the creek and one well on our neighbor's land. Luckily we strike underground water at our neighbor's land. It was fine for a while. We also used the pipe-in water to fill up the well at the creek. Unfortunately, part of the cliff eroded and block off the underground water inlet. Water level was recovering too slowly for our usage (as we have extended till 2 acres of vegetable). We then reverted to the wells at the creek. We have sufficient water for the moment, but we are only planting 2 out of 4 acres of our farm. Our option now is to plant plants that requires less water. We have 4 wells to rotate so we feel that we should be good for a stretch of three weeks of no / intermittent rain. We then proceed to plant out our remaining land. Things turned out well for us, as the rain came on the evening of 11th September. It's raining daily mostly in the late evening or night. We are so grateful to the weather and the weather forecast people. A big Thank You.
