Walking our Talk

The front of our native cogon thatched steps and deck. The
bamboo playset for our daughter is on the right.
click any photo on the page to enlarge.

We are going for sustainability not out of need, but out of respect, love, and concern for dear Mother Earth.  We are doing what we can to lower our carbon footprint and set an example for others to follow to preserve our planet.

We moved to Puerto Princesa City, Palawan in 2009 looking for a nice slice of land to call our own and experiment with sustainability. I like it here because I hate earthquakes and strong winds that come into the rest of the nation with the typhoons and PPC has neither.

After driving all around the vast city of Puerto Princesa and outlying areas, we settled in Luzvimnda, 33 kilometers outside of City Center on 2 hectares. It used to take us a little over 35 minutes to get to town, but they have been "fixing" the roads and bridges for the last year, and now it takes us almost an hour.

The cogon thatched roof harvested locally, which leads to our native deck. Our two Et3 electric trikes are parked under the stairs.

Recycled soda bottle
planter for herbs.

Our property has no view overlooking the sea, as most people were trying to sell us. It is in fact in a dell between two hills, with no view except for the green foliage of the plants and trees that surround us. So I guess I am the farmer in the dell. Though the farmer wouldn't be too accurate since we aren't really farming anything yet.  We based our purchase not on views, but on what the land already had to offer and that we could already use. Bamboo and a creek were two of the factors which helped us decide to buy this plot of land.

We do have little recycled hanging plastic gardens hanging here and there with herbs and such. The soil here is very hard clay, and we haven't gotten the composting thing down well enough to supplement or amend the soil properly yet. So little planters and bottles are what we can easily deal with for the time being.

Most of the buildings on the property are made of the bamboo from our groves, the kind of thick bamboo that is good for building huts and furniture. I've always loved bamboo and dreamed of having lots of it in my own place, and now that dream is real.

The first building we put up was a little bamboo hut for the water pump. We added a shower room so that when we came out, we could freshen up with nice clean well water before heading back to town. We also added a little porch under the eaves where we could sit and ponder our next move and had a bamboo table made from our own bamboo. That was so exciting.

The pumphouse made from our own bamboo with
Dave's electric motorbikes.

We raise our own chickens which wander freely about the property.  I just love watching chickens for some reason, and I really love the taste of free-range chicken eggs and chicken. We only harvest the males for meat since all they do is chase the hens and fight amongst each other.

Puerto Princesa has a lot of electrical brownouts. It's just gotten worse as the unprecedented building of commercial properties has increased since the PPC Underground River became one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. The power company was already having time supplying the residents and business in 2009 and they haven't seemed to cope with all the new power users.

To counter the brownouts, all the solar lights keep our property well lit at night and we use a diesel generator to power everything else during these frequent brownouts. Lately, they have been lasting over 11 hours and yesterday, we had 4 during the day and in the middle of the night. The diesel generator has made our lives so much more comfortable.  We are aiming at replacing this with more solar panels as we can over the years.

I have a lot more photos of the property on my FaceBook Album called Home Sweet Country Living.

The first building we put up. The pumphouse. We used our own bamboo and recycled broken tiles for the shower stall and the sink area. I designed the pattern of the bamboo. I love it. This building is lit exclusively by very bright solar LED light bulbs!

Side view of the pumphouse/shower/eating deck.

We use electric trikes to get around the village.  Dave did extensive research and development on these. We have been using them for over 2 years now and we love them.

Dave calls this his electric carabao. An electric farm trike pulling a heavy-duty trailer. This rig climbs our hills and hauls heavy logs with no problem. Built for durability not speed.

Dave charges his electric motorbikes with solar panels.

The broken tiles were cheap and we used them for the shower stall in the pump house.

We have so many coconuts on our property so we have begun to make our own virgin coconut oil for cooking and I also use the oil on my body and face! We use all parts of the coconut. The meat for coconut milk for certain food dishes, we extract the oil, the husks are used as bedding for my orchids and the coconut shells we dry and reuse as lamp bases, bowls, lampshades, etc.

Caretaker cottage. Handy helper Jhun has resided it with scrap bamboo from the groves with my direction. He still has to clean it up, but normally they would have burned these scraps.

Our daughter wanted a swing, slide and sandbox. Dave designed this set for her using the bamboo from our groves. It's a favorite place for her and the children of our village helpers to spend a whole afternoon.

My bottle planters finally grew out and I can pinch off the leaves for my daily greens.

The reward from our chickens. Farm fresh eggs. The yolks are deep orange and the whites hold their shapes and are not runny like water, but nice and firm. Delicious too.

This part of the inside of our chicken hut. The floor is lined with a foot of rice hulls and sawdust. The rice hulls and sawdust keep the hut smelling nice  When it gets too soiled we take it all out and put the liter in our garden to improve the soil.  The chickens lay the eggs in the baskets provided, mostly! Sometimes they find a way into the caretakers' hut and lay the eggs under the bed!

Fruits from our property. Pineapple, papaya, and jackfruit. Papaya can be eaten green as a vegetable, sort of tastes and looks like Chayote. The jackfruit can also be eaten as a vegetable before it ripens. It's quite starchy and rather like the heart of banana. Usually cooked in coconut milk One of my favorite ways of eating jackfruit before it ripens!

A native pineapple in our yard. Small but sweet.

We harvest rainwater from the metal roof of our carport and it fills this soon to be tilapia pond. Eventually, we will use the water from this to experiment with aquaculture. We have two other cistern in different locations to harvest rain for washing clothes and watering our plants.

This root was something found during the clearing of one field. When I saw it I asked our handy helper Jhun not to trash it but to make me a jewelry tree out of it. This is what he came up with. Isn't it cool? He used a coconut shell as a base. We have a lot of coconut shells since we grate our own coconuts for the milk and reuse them in things like this.

This is the controller that powers a couple of LED solar lights.  It also has an adapter that charges our cell phones. There is a black cell phone charging at the top of the unit. We got these solar lights from the Photovoltaic Solar Centre, Door #4 Lustre Building, Rizal Avenue, 5300 Puerto Princesa City, Puerto Princesa, Philippines(048) 4346940; Mobile No. 09088937191 email = pvsolarcentre@gmail.com

This is one of the solar LED lights that came with the power pack above.

We discovered these new LED light bulbs in town and when we installed them, they are much brighter than our electrical  higher-rated watt bulbs! We have placed them in several places. This one is above my desk and I can use it all day to light up my whole office space. The bamboo base is, of course, scrap bamboo which would normally have been burned, but now our helper knows better uses than burning!! Yay!

Dave Dewbre is responsible for all the solar lights, generator, and all the electric vehicles. He's so handy! Here he is with his electric sea scooters which we use to tool around the bay here in Mangingisda.

There are a lot of banana trees on our property, we use the leaves for wrapping a native desert called Suman, which is sticky rice boiled in coconut milk then steamed in the banana wrappers.