Are you ready for El Niño until 2016? What are some of the things you’re doing to prepare, apart from the conservation of water? Do you have plants and animals that are/will be affected by El Niño?
We’ve had a dry spell of nearly 5 months this year, from February until June, and this resulted in the loss of many crops and in some villages, the death of goats and cattle due to the lack of water to drink and moisture in vegetation. So we’re thinking more seriously about water shortage beginning January 2016 and a simple way of water desalination / purification is one of the things we’re looking at, sea water being just a few meters away. Another item on our agenda is soil moisture retention to keep our plants alive and the condition of the soil good. The last one is water harvesting, generally a means to collect rainwater run-off (we’ve already started this by having a tilapia pond, duck pond and a reservoir).
How about you? Are you getting ready for El Niño? Here’s an interesting video on water desalination/purification.
We are interested in saving and swapping heirloom and/or open-pollinated seeds with anyone from the Philippines. As of this moment, the following seeds (below) are available for swap. Just bear in mind that in principle all our seeds should be heirloom and open-pollinated as they come from plants growing in our garden, but some might be natural hybrids where seeds have more than one source. We do our best, but we are not a professional seed company and cannot make promises.
If you’d like to join the swap, simply fill up the form at “Backyard Seeds”, just let us know what seeds you can swap and which seeds you’d like to receive. You can find the 2015 Inventory of Seeds at The Home Farm by Trevor.
First, this large crab came in for lunch. Then we went to forage for vegetables in the garden, early in the morning before it starts raining again! And finally, the duck bacon in the fridge is finished!
The lady who comes to sell sea urchin came today with this huge crab, still alive, lost one of its pinchers. It’s a male crab, so not much fatty bits to expect. It weighs about 800 grams, and she sold it to us for 60 pesos. I asked her if she could find us some bangus fingerlings. She said she’ll get them (her husband is a fisherman). One usually gathers/harvests them along the beach during season. Been raining here all day, typhoon Jenny going north near Luzon. I hope no damage or casualties anywhere.Here’s a harvest of winged beans and duck and chicken eggs early in the morning. We’ll have plenty of winged bean seeds soon so let us know if you want to swap seeds (in Philippines only).Still cloudy, rainy, windy, a bit of sun, humid, here in Bohol! Pigs love the resulting mud but we humans need to be careful of the slippery slopes. After feeding the pigs, a quick harvest through the garden before the rain starts again, and again, and again. A lot of saluyot, a bit of okra and sitaw. Looking at how the saluyot grows, nobody should starve in this place, the saluyot grows like weeds, they proliferate themselves crazy. If you want seeds (Philippines only), let us know, we’ll have plenty soon, they can probably grow OK in pots.Crab (duck-egg) omelette topped with winged beans cooked in coconut milk, chilli and a bit of bagoong alamang! Lunch!
Do duck eggs taste different than chicken eggs?
It may depend on what type of eggs you are used to eating, and how they are prepared. Commercially farmed (chicken) eggs are unfertilised and may taste differently from free-range eggs. In fact, in the EU and Australia, eggs are graded by the hen farming method – whether free range or battery caged. You may also be used to eating eggs sunny-side up, with the yolk still runny, and may therefore prefer the gamey taste of eggs (and meat). Personally, I can’t easily tell the taste difference between chicken and duck eggs, but that might just be because I’m so used to eating raw eggs (we ate raw eggs when I was a child, mixed with Sarsi!). However, I know someone who can tell the difference in taste of eggs (chickens and ducks) depending on what the fowls have been eating! 🙂
Crab rice, saluyot and okra veggies and the “duck bacon!”
