Hands on farm work

 Our Farmers mixing ingredients for the indoor area of the pigs. It's made of Coco Coir, sawdust, carbonized rice hull (CRH), soil, effective microorganisms, and a dash of salt. This creates a healthy, full of beneficial bacteria, environment for the beddings. In turn, manure is broken down into compost. 
Pigs are snout diggers so we give them beddings that can mimic their natural environment. It has been said that bad bacteria and pathogens thrive in concrete flooring because of the moist environment due to constant watering of the beds. Since pig manure is good for composting, we dont wash them away. We then use the bedding as a substrate for our vegetables. Talk about zero waste and recycling.

Our compost heap:) Chicken/Pig manure, spoiled veggies, banana trunks and leaves, coco coir, saw dust etc.

Making CRH(Carbonized rice hull). This serves as a home for beneficial bacterias to thrive in your substrate. The brown stuff are the processed chicken manure. This is to be mixed to the compost and future Vermiculture bed.

Back breaking labor! We first had to transport the garden soil to the raised bed area which is about 30 meters away from the bed area. We bring in compost, crh and processed chicken manure in sacks.Then we mix the substrates like compost, soil, and crh to create a raised bed. We then stacked rubble from the other buildings in the farm that has been demolished.  Each row is about 1x20m. Each area can accomodate 4 rows. It's very labor intesive but worth it. No rubble was wasted :)

  Our first area for herbs. We started tilling and cultivating the soil manually. We then mixed the soil with compost, processed manure, and CRH. We also removed unwanted stones in the area. The small pond is for a pair of Red Eared Sliders turtle.