Odds and Ends

I'm not sure if it's a GOOD idea to begin writing this on April 1.

There seems to always be a variety of things all going on at once, here, except for the occasional day when it suddenly seems like there's nothing.  Usually a day like that is just when "everything all at once" has hit snags which keep things from happening.  But there are usually enough things-all-at-once, so that at least one project will still be moving along.  

This week is a good example: the cement-block maker's truck is being repaired, so on Monday afternoon we used the last of the cement-blocks which are going into our "cottage project" at our farm.  We had expected to have 3 days' construction this week (Thursday through Sunday of the week are the "holy days" of Easter week, so no construction on those days).  But until we get another delivery of blocks, nothing much can happen.  So, Tuesday was at least partly taken up with a trip to the window company, and we will have an estimator here soon to place the order for cottage- windows.  And today, Wednesday, worked out for me to have some hired help, so the table-saw frame project is finally moving along.  Seems like it will be next Monday before the cottage project gets back on track.


Meanwhile I have been taking photos - sporadically - of all sorts of things as they occur to me, whenever I have the camera with me. I don't think that his posting is going to be very "topically organized" but we'll see how it goes.

Grandson photo warning: at least  one grandson photo is likely to appear here.

Seems like there was a big influx of civic-project/ highway

improvement/ miscellaneous funds into our area 3 or 4

months ago.  This 3- meter tall (that's 10-feet) all-concrete

sign was recently completed at the border to our municipality.

Also we have seen many new road-marking signs (note the

"<" signpost, one of a series indicating left - curve).  At several

places there are now distance-ahead signs ("Barbaza 12, 

Laua - an 18") which were never seen before.

It amuses me, in an odd way, how many things are either

"the same" or have obviously transferred from one culture

to another.  I see "Vision" and "Mission" signs like these

(from a nearby Community Cooperative) many places here.

"The Four-Way Test" (Rotary International ethics) in a local

language is prominently displayed on an intersection kiosk at

San Jose, directly in front of the Masonic Center building there.

Since I mentioned the table-saw project, I'll show you this

main-shaft assembly which I ordered special-made from a

machinist in San Jose.  The blade is from Lowe's, sent to

me  via "care package" from Kentucky.  The rest of the saw's

metal frame will be hand-cut and welded locally.  I'm beginning

to wonder if April Fool's Day is the right time to begin building

a table-saw.  But, that's how it worked out.  I have NOT seen

a factory-built table-saw here; every one I have seen is

someone's personal fabrication, and mine will be the same.

The following morning from the above photo, a whole day's
production is laid out on the workshop floor.  My "best worker"
needed 8 hours to cut these 24 pieces of angle-iron; for me
to have done the cutting myself the elapsed time would have
been several days, and probably more actual hours.  These
pieces, IF I "got it right,"  will make the main part of the saw-
frame, with a vertical-sliding mounting for the shaft, to allow
the cutting height to be adjustable.  After this part of the saw
is welded together and adjusted, we will add legs and braces
to make the finished table-top a standard 32- inches high.
The final job will be to make and very accurately install a
hardwood table- top, so that we can make precise cuts.
(OOPS - after the table-top will still be buying and installing
the motors and drive components.  This saw will use an
electric motor for small routine projects but will be able to
have a gas or diesel  motor mounted for sawing heavy slabs.)

Meanwhile brother-in-law Alex has been using the "down-

day" from construction to do some tool-making.   A lot of the

morning has gone to cold hammering and grinding on this

"bolo" blade.  "Bolo" is the local word for machete.

He also made the two cement- trowel blades from a piece

of stainless- steel pipe which he cut and flattened.  These

will have the re-bar shanks welded and wooden handles

made sometime later.

He has kept pretty busy with boat-building projects, too; he

shaped the "swan neck" for one end of a boat using the

hand-axe and a bolo (machete, remember?).  Neighbors
soon gathered up all of the wood-scraps into a used
rice-sack to be used for cooking fuel. 

As to the subject of cooking, I've mentioned in the past that we do most of our longer, "heavy-duty" cooking with either charcoal or wood.  Barbecue-type propane fuels our gas-stove and oven, but it's  for "convenience," as it is costly.  We are in the process of replacing BOTH of our outdoor "stoves," which are scarcely more than a year old - bought at separate times.  The terra-cotta pottery stove which has a large opening for wood-burning has gotten a crack which is visible in its main body, between the fire opening and the tab which the pot sits on.

Meanwhile, the cast- cement stove which is designed for charcoal use has had its right-front corner tab break off.  It is still usable but probably not for long.  Below is a 12- inch 
"tall" steel roller - used to run a conveyor belt on rice processing machinery.  If it is correctly cut- down, it makes a nearly perfect solid-fuel burning stove, and lasts a long time. In this first picture it is 'way too tall to be useful.

   

But when I shortened it, I got it so short that the chunks of charcoal often are too big to fit between the grid and the pot- rack.  I still have enough metal left to easily make some "tabs" which can be welded on top to increase the height.  This is now on the "things-to-do list.".

Once the steel-roller stove for charcoal   use is completed,  I have another roller available to try to make a wood- burning stove.  This will also be a little challenge, as the diameter of the roller is a little too small for the size fire, and firewood, which will be needed. I will have to figure out how to flare- out the lower portion of the stove to contain a larger fire.

 On a recent afternoon walk I found one of Bernadette's

uncles busy with an improvised shuttle and hand-loom,

making some light weight fishing line into a small net.

This is a pretty fine net, and my guess is that it will be used

to catch the 2- or 3- inch long "minnows" which are often

dried and then added whole to stir-fry type cooking.

There are always fish being dried on the Malabor beach,

it seems,  on bamboo mats, tarps, pieces of roofing-tin,
and here, an elevated rack made of bamboo slats.  Grand-
son Timmie gets a close-up look at some of the product;
the farther ones are 10- to 12- inch fish which have been

filleted before drying.  Nearer are some creatures which

put on their brakes too hard - that's why they "squidded."

A lot of small-boat fishing happens at night, here.  It seems
to be more productive to go out after dark with spotlights
hanging outside the boat; the light attracts fish, making it
easier to net them.  This little rest-house was built recently,
giving the crew of one boat a place to nap before and after
the fishing trips.  The side-panels seem to be made by taking
the segment-dividers out of the inside of bamboo, and then 
splintering the bamboo outer stalk enough to unroll and
flatten it into a panel.  I will try to photo this process soon.

Here's a photo sent to me by a friend, from about March 1,
of what Kentucky looked like for nearly all of February and
most of March this year.

 Meanwhile on about Feb. 27, our tomato plant in a bucket

had about 17 fruit well-set, and some additional blossoms

beginning to form.

About March 24, things were beginning to thaw in Kentucky;
and, some of our tomatoes had ripened from green to a
pretty shade of red.  These are a "Roma" or "Amish Paste"
type tomato, about three inches long when mature.

March 31, these are some of the ripe tomatoes which have
not been cut up for salads.  The "International Coffee" tin
behind them gives an idea of their size.  There is talk of
making a small batch of salsa with these and a few others
nearly ripe.  The late blossoms have set into another batch
of fruit, which has reached about one- inch in size; if the
plant continues to thrive, we can expect some more ripe
tomatoes in a few weeks.

I mentioned the cottage project in the top-section of this posting.  We need a secure  (cement) building at our small farm, to store tools and supplies, and to provide restroom, less-primitive cooking, and occasional sleeping facilities.  Monday, March 23 was ground-breaking, and the end of Monday, March 30, made a total of 7 working days for our crew. This posting is already getting long, but here are a few photos - and I will probably put more detail into another posting later. ( NEW READERS: use the navigation links, upper right of the page, to scan back at entries in Jan. thru July of 2013 - which give good detail about general construction here;  quite different from USA.  Here are a few:) 

Hel"Lowe's"
Steel Deal
The Larson Foundation

This tree-trunk slab will make a great-looking novelty table-
top.  But here, it gives an idea of the shape of the tree that
our lumber came from.

Marked with a straight-line string for a guide, the saw-operator
expertly cuts straight slabs from the tree segments, and then
cuts those slabs into the desired dimensions of "stick-lumber."

The irregular- contoured tree becomes a sizable pile of
material to be used for rafters, porch-joists, etc.  There is no
lumber industry here; this is how building lumber is made.


Deeply-dug reinforced piers support hand-fabricated re-bar
frames for the building's posts.  These are tied together by
the wall "footings"which also have their re-bar tied into  MORE
vertical re-bar, which goes up into the walls as they are built.

The initial order of 500 "hollow blocks" was used in about 
4 actual "days a-laying."  Additional blocks will arrive when
the block-maker's truck is repaired, and now, AFTER the
Holy Week/ Easter  holidays are complete.


The end of the seventh working day had the front walls at
full height and the bathroom about halfway.  It is a cottage;
the main room will be 10 x 12 feet.  Cooking will be mostly
outside at an equipped area of the  porch - a covered, wide
wrap-around porch, where we will also dine "alfresco."

Well, I managed to sneak one "Timmie shot" into the mix earlier.
Here he is, a few days before 10- months- old, and it is about
5 minutes before he got his latest "booster" shot at the clinic.
His expression changed for a while after that.  Timmie is
our daughter Thea's baby.

 I've had requests for more "scenic shots."  Being here all the time I sometimes forget just how pretty the place is.  But it's wonderful!  Even the near-constant heat can be dealt with (I'm a BIG FAN of electric fans);  we enjoy being in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I often see sunsets like this one when I'm out walking.

I've mentioned "Holy Week" earlier in this posting.  In our area and in most of the Philippines, several days are given to commemorating the events surrounding Jesus Christ's crucifixion and  and resurrection.  And this is entirely appropriate, as these events are a turning-point in the history of the entire world - no other few days in all of recorded time have had such far-flung influence  on places and cultures in all points of time and geography since.  And this influence has touched many millions of people personally as individuals came to understand and grasp for themselves the significance of the Creator's Plan for their lives.  The facts - the historicity - of the events have been established independent of the Bible many times, by "hard core" skeptics and believers alike.  I encourage skeptics and believers who read this to look again, and BE AMAZED!

As to the "holiday" side of the upcoming weekend, we are planning some combination of American and Filipino cuisine, by way of celebration.  Right now, there's a batch of ice cream custard cooling in the kitchen, and materials being gathered for a small quantity of salsa to accompany the American-style tortilla chips we've acquired.

Wishing you all a joyous weekend, and the very best outcomes for your pursuits in the next little while.

Have a great day!

Tim and Bernadette Larson,   Philippines

Projects and Projections

I started this posting in mid-January.  It got mired down with internet-connection problems and was also in competition with a number of other projects, so was considerably delayed.

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.

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).

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.

"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

LINK:

Google Map view of our "larger area".