Pictured here is World Sisters United Director Vangie who is standing in the first WSU rice field's first harvest. This 2.5 hectacre farm in Malasqui Philippines is now being transformed into an ampalaya field. This has been an exciting and successful adventure as we can practically feed a small village with this single small farm. We rotate crops from rice to corn to ampalaya. (check out my previous blog: http://larriji.blogspot.com/2008/02/small-short-term-loan-sought-for-bunso.html) We have struggled to raise the money to build up the ampalaya vine frames and to buy the seeds. I was able to sell a piece of video gear to help get the farm set up. Pictured below is preparations for the ground. We rented the tractor that is mixing and breaking the soil up.
Pictured here below is the bamboo poles I paid 11,500 peso for. These we can reuse from season to season for at least 3 years. So this is a depreciable capitol expense that saves us a bit over the next few seasons.
Pictured below is the Vangie's father managing the setup of the bamboo into frames for the Ampalaya vine.
Pictured here below is where you can see the use of blue string being tied up to allow the vine to grow on it. The cost of labor 5000 peso (us$120).
The cost of the blue string to cover this 2.5 hectacres was 2000 peso (us$50). The really shocking cost was the seeds that set me back $14,000 peso (us$ 340)
So the next picture shows how amazing mother nature is. The warm air, hot sun and pumped in well water has produced an amazing vine in a very short time.
The total yeild for this crop is estimated to yeild 49K peso. (Which is about us$1179) This amount is enough to provide 50% of the income for this very large extended family of Vangie's seen below living in this small nipa compound near Pangasinan.
Please give a dollar to pitch in to help us to complete the harvest for this Ampalaya farm.
We still need to raise 350 dollars for fertilizer and natural organic pesticide.
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