The year 2014 seemed to end with about a thousand things all happening at the same time. We managed to at least get started on quite a few of the back-logged projects, and have some hopes of getting most of our needed "Infrastructure" in place within the next year. The in-town property is pretty well finished except for some up-grades to kitchen and bathroom in the older house. Since we seem to be getting along OK with things as they are, there, our attention will shift to developing the farm- property which is a little over a mile away from the house.
This is the "nipa" house which sits on the vegetable-garden side
of our farm property. The front field is 60 or 70 feet deep from
the road back to the house, and about twice that width along
the road frontage. The field beyond the house is about 1.5
times the size of the front field; together they will make a fine
large area for a "truck-farm" and small dairy operation. Not
seen because of the tree at right side, is a rocky hill dividing the
property, which is the same height and 4x the size of the house.
We will need a small concrete house in-place, to be able to
secure tools and supplies for our food-production; we hope
to build the house sometime in mid- 2015.
The first task was to provide a parking and turn-around area
for vehicles; the gravel road is large enough for 4- to 5- ton
trucks but there are very few passing or turn-around points. The
10-inch tree stump was primarily cut out with a machete; the
pick- work in the background is to prepare a drainage ditch so
that a small cement bridge (culvert) can be built over it. This
photo is with the nipa house behind me and to my right.
Large rocks are collected from a hillside, and later from the
riverbed (16-foot climb), to use for building the vehicle pad.
All are hand-carried in re-used cement sacks.
Interesting to note that this area, which is a mile from the sea and elevated, has quite a few rocks with small sea-fossils and occasionally a larger fossilized shell. It must have been sea-bed sometime in the past.
Meanwhile, the sides of the drainage ditch have been lined
with large stones where the drive-in will be. These stones
will be covered with cement, and then sticks and scrap ply-
wood will be used to form and pour a reinforced- cement
bridge/ culvert for vehicles to enter and exit the parking pad.
Here is what the completed parking pad looked like; there
is room for a medium-sized truck to deliver building materials
here, now. Every single rock was carried in a sack to be hand-
placed for the parking area, and all the cement for the ditch
and bridge was mixed with shovels and poured from buckets.
Visible from this angle is the hill mentioned at photo 1 above.
A few weeks after the previous photo, the Suzuki was fitted
with roof- bars and rear-arch to enable carrying longer
objects. I did the fabrication and fitting, only having to
take the project at its various stages to a local welder.
The elapsed time for the project was about 3 weeks, and
I conservatively estimate that I put 40 hours of "hands-
on" effort into completing it. Previous "carry" was limited
to about 8- foot long; one frequent carry now will be the
10-foot rolled-up rice mat. I have meanwhile carried
20-foot lengths of pipe and angle-iron easily.
This Gmelina tree stood at the corner of the nipa house. This
species (sounds like "Jim-Molina") is also called beechwood
and white teak. Wikipedia mentions it in locations from Africa
to Australia. It is used extensively for re-forestation because
it grows quickly and produces straight trunks and limbs. At
maturity, this one was suspected of having hollows which would
weaken it and create a storm- hazard, so it was removed. The
lower trunk, upper trunk, and single main limb all produced
slabs 14- feet long of fine, clear wood. The cost of having
these slabs moved 1 mile was one motivation for building
the carry-rack system on the Suzuki.
A different project which caught my eye is this 3- story house
which is under construction nearby. Sand and gravel is being
carried in sacks from a pile to the left of the photo; mixed into
cement at center (mechanical mixer is not common here for
a house project); passed in buckets up a series of scaffold-
ramps to where the 3rd floor is being poured. I counted 30+
workers, also very unusual for a house project. This scene
reminded me VERY MUCH of poster art I used to see, which
was pen-and-ink drawings of large-scale projects with lots
of people doing different things. (A little like Grandma Moses?)
One late-2014 project was constructing a storage building in
our poultry yard. Concrete building projects here begin with
cutting and bending steel re-bar into "loops" which will be
tied together with lengths of re-bar for reinforcing poured
concrete. Several of the 2013 blogs show typical construction
process here, from when we built the house. See the
navigation links at the upper right corner of this page.
Deep, solid concrete piers will support poured-posts which
are incorporated into the cement-block walls. These piers
are also tied with re-bar into the footings for the walls, and
into horizontal and vertical re-bar running through the walls.
As the walls begin to rise above ground level, the
size of the building becomes more apparent.
A little over 2 weeks after start, the building was
completed. This allows us to store our rice harvests
either for our own use or to be sold when the price
reaches the upper end of fluctuations. It should
help to pay for the needed house at the farm.
Bernadette's brother Alex visited with us for about 6 months,
and in-between our projects he built several fishing boats.
There is a "Boats and Fishing" blog in the 2013 postings which
gives some detail about how the canoes are constructed. But
I learned a few new things as I watched these being built.
This plank was hand-sawn to about 3/4- inch thickness, from
a thicker slab. I still use my hand-saws frequently for small
fairly quick cutting, but it's hard for me to imagine the amount
of effort and patience it would take to hand-saw this.
I hadn't known before this that all the nails used to build
the boats are copper, to prevent them from rusting out.
This one was painted a wonderful green color, as the newer
boats are beginning to get away from the "stock color" aqua
blue which has been standard. The Owl and the Pussycat
would love it, I think.
I got my camera situation sorted out on a trip to Iloilo in early February.
On the return trip I managed to get a few scenic photos; there are several large, old Spanish churches along the route.
Our 130-mile-triangle island is quite mountainous, so there
are lots of rivers; unusual to drive more than a couple miles
on the coastal highway without crossing a bridge. Mostly they
are concrete -piling and -girder bridges now, but a few of
the old steel "kit- bridges" remain in use. This one seems
to be something over 500 yards long.
We stop fairly often at this roadside business; an hour's drive
from "start," it makes a convenient leg-stretch. Despite the
owner's name "Lourdes" I haven't experienced any unexplained
healing. Toyota and Mitsubishi both make jeep-looking
cars like the red one here, and likely it's one of those.
of our farm property. The front field is 60 or 70 feet deep from
the road back to the house, and about twice that width along
the road frontage. The field beyond the house is about 1.5
times the size of the front field; together they will make a fine
large area for a "truck-farm" and small dairy operation. Not
seen because of the tree at right side, is a rocky hill dividing the
property, which is the same height and 4x the size of the house.
We will need a small concrete house in-place, to be able to
secure tools and supplies for our food-production; we hope
to build the house sometime in mid- 2015.
for vehicles; the gravel road is large enough for 4- to 5- ton
trucks but there are very few passing or turn-around points. The
10-inch tree stump was primarily cut out with a machete; the
pick- work in the background is to prepare a drainage ditch so
that a small cement bridge (culvert) can be built over it. This
photo is with the nipa house behind me and to my right.
riverbed (16-foot climb), to use for building the vehicle pad.
All are hand-carried in re-used cement sacks.
Interesting to note that this area, which is a mile from the sea and elevated, has quite a few rocks with small sea-fossils and occasionally a larger fossilized shell. It must have been sea-bed sometime in the past.with large stones where the drive-in will be. These stones
will be covered with cement, and then sticks and scrap ply-
wood will be used to form and pour a reinforced- cement
bridge/ culvert for vehicles to enter and exit the parking pad.
A little later on this day, my camera battery "cooked" itself, and I wasn't able to make photos of the project being completed.. This was my "substitute" camera, a small video-cam I had been using to take "still- photos" since my Sanyo pocket camera had also worn out and broken. The remaining photos are either from files stored in the laptop-computer, or taken with the cell-phone (difficult and poor quality).
is room for a medium-sized truck to deliver building materials
here, now. Every single rock was carried in a sack to be hand-
placed for the parking area, and all the cement for the ditch
and bridge was mixed with shovels and poured from buckets.
Visible from this angle is the hill mentioned at photo 1 above.
with roof- bars and rear-arch to enable carrying longer
objects. I did the fabrication and fitting, only having to
take the project at its various stages to a local welder.
The elapsed time for the project was about 3 weeks, and
I conservatively estimate that I put 40 hours of "hands-
on" effort into completing it. Previous "carry" was limited
to about 8- foot long; one frequent carry now will be the
10-foot rolled-up rice mat. I have meanwhile carried
20-foot lengths of pipe and angle-iron easily.
species (sounds like "Jim-Molina") is also called beechwood
and white teak. Wikipedia mentions it in locations from Africa
to Australia. It is used extensively for re-forestation because
it grows quickly and produces straight trunks and limbs. At
maturity, this one was suspected of having hollows which would
weaken it and create a storm- hazard, so it was removed. The
lower trunk, upper trunk, and single main limb all produced
slabs 14- feet long of fine, clear wood. The cost of having
these slabs moved 1 mile was one motivation for building
the carry-rack system on the Suzuki.
which is under construction nearby. Sand and gravel is being
carried in sacks from a pile to the left of the photo; mixed into
cement at center (mechanical mixer is not common here for
a house project); passed in buckets up a series of scaffold-
ramps to where the 3rd floor is being poured. I counted 30+
workers, also very unusual for a house project. This scene
reminded me VERY MUCH of poster art I used to see, which
was pen-and-ink drawings of large-scale projects with lots
of people doing different things. (A little like Grandma Moses?)
our poultry yard. Concrete building projects here begin with
cutting and bending steel re-bar into "loops" which will be
tied together with lengths of re-bar for reinforcing poured
concrete. Several of the 2013 blogs show typical construction
process here, from when we built the house. See the
navigation links at the upper right corner of this page.
are incorporated into the cement-block walls. These piers
are also tied with re-bar into the footings for the walls, and
into horizontal and vertical re-bar running through the walls.
size of the building becomes more apparent.
completed. This allows us to store our rice harvests
either for our own use or to be sold when the price
reaches the upper end of fluctuations. It should
help to pay for the needed house at the farm.
and in-between our projects he built several fishing boats.
There is a "Boats and Fishing" blog in the 2013 postings which
gives some detail about how the canoes are constructed. But
I learned a few new things as I watched these being built.
a thicker slab. I still use my hand-saws frequently for small
fairly quick cutting, but it's hard for me to imagine the amount
of effort and patience it would take to hand-saw this.
the boats are copper, to prevent them from rusting out.
boats are beginning to get away from the "stock color" aqua
blue which has been standard. The Owl and the Pussycat
would love it, I think.
I got my camera situation sorted out on a trip to Iloilo in early February.On the return trip I managed to get a few scenic photos; there are several large, old Spanish churches along the route.
are lots of rivers; unusual to drive more than a couple miles
on the coastal highway without crossing a bridge. Mostly they
are concrete -piling and -girder bridges now, but a few of
the old steel "kit- bridges" remain in use. This one seems
to be something over 500 yards long.
from "start," it makes a convenient leg-stretch. Despite the
owner's name "Lourdes" I haven't experienced any unexplained
healing. Toyota and Mitsubishi both make jeep-looking
cars like the red one here, and likely it's one of those.
"Just in passing," the men's facility at Lourdes had been a
cement gutter, still visible, which was on two sides of the
room; it was hosed with water occasionally. So it was
quite a surprise to see this elegant upgrade, made from
5-gallon plastic water-cooler bottles. A segment of the
bottom and side of each has been cut and formed into a
"catchment apron", and each unit is set into place in a hole
cut into the 4- inch drain pipe which is installed above
the old "trough." (Sorry, ladies, it's a "GUY THING.")
Despite the subject, it IS an ingenious project, and they
did a stand-up job with it.
Feb. 21, I planned to go to the newly built moto-cross race
track, nearby and watch a couple of the races which were
part of the annual Municipal Festival. I got there early and
backed the tailgate clear up to the rope- boundary for the
track, at the best high-spot overview. I hadn't planned to
be there all day, but within a short while we were completely
blocked in by spectators and other vehicles. We never got
away until after 5 p.m.
The track is in an "unbuildable" (gets flooded) low-spot, about
120 x 120 yards; It has an "L" shaped loop which goes mostly around
the outside, and about 9 "legs" which run back and forth in the middle,
with tight switch-back turns between them. It would be nearly 3/4 mile
length, really rough, and with many jumps and "rhythm section"
mounds in between the curves.
There were finally about 10 races that day, in various bike-
sizes and skill-levels. A nice breeze blew a lot of the dust
away from us, but we still washed about 100 pounds
off the car afterward.
"Zaccheus and friends?" The tree next to the car was fully
utilized all day long, and at one time I was able to count 18
occupants, a little hard to do because they were pretty
tangled up among the branches.
There were several well-skilled riders who put on a good show
for us, and a number of relatively- newbies who added a lot
of spontaneity to the mixture. This "best jump I caught"
also shows a little about the amount of dust, as he was
about 25 yards from us. Everyone had a good time, there
were just enough spills to be interesting, and nobody got hurt.
Well, it is nearly 2 p.m. on Feb. 23rd. The room I'm sitting in is on the relatively "cool" side of this house, and I am wearing my "ADAM Signature Brand tailored shirt," but the electric fan is still required for comfort. In California, the temperatures are around 40 F, overnight, and mid- 60s daytime, give or take a little, in Modesto and in San Luis Obispo. Around the La Grange, KY, area the temperatures are well below 32 F. both daytime and night, and in fact have been in the singles and teens a lot of the time, with snowpack over ice accumulation and wind-chills down below minus 10 F. I don't miss the KY winter all that much, but sometimes I "get a hankering" for a crisp feeling day
Hoping and intending to get back on track with the blog postings - - we'll see how it goes!
We trust that all of you are "finding the blessings along the way" in 2015, and that you will continually find the right mix of challenge and satisfaction in all that you do.
Tim and Bernadette Larson
Panay Island
Antique Province (Spanish pronunciation, "ann-TEE-kay)
Philippines
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