In 2003, shortly after the death of my mother, I planted 10,000 mahogany trees in our farm in Barangay Buliran, Cabanatuan City, Philippines. My reason for planting mahogany trees is three folds:
1.To make a positive difference to the ecology of the Philippines.Birds have migrated to my plantation and used them as their new habitat. During my visits, I have spotted a couple of grey owls in my plantation. Somehow, a hunter shot the other owl for fun. The hunter was warned never to come back to my plantation. Birds are nesting on the trees, and monkeys and deers are yet to be found.
2.Create employment for the unemployed.
3. Source of income for my mission to help out the impoverished children of the Philippines through free education. In my interviews with the squatters who used to live in our compound in Mayapyap, the reason the squatters have remained squatters thru out their lives was because they had no education. They have no skills and most of the women wash clothes and get paid only $2 or Php 100 a day.
I started off with 12,000 seedlings that I bought from mahogany farmers in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija. I also brought in 12 planters from Carranglan to plant the seedlings. The ideal height of seedlings needed is 2 ft so that the weeds would not overcrowd the seedlings which if not taken care of would kill the plants.The trees are now 3 years and 3 months old and over 30 ft or 9.1 m in height and an average breast height diamenter of 3 inches or 7.6 cm . The rate of growth is 9 inches or 23 cm every month. We have been using urea to fertilize the trees and built irrigation system for the dry season which starts from November to April. Maintenance of the trees are high during its first year of operation because of the weeds and the need for water. Maintenance and labor is low when the trees are two years old as we do not need to cut the weeds with weed cutters that require extensive labor and fuel. The trees are ready for harvest in 10-12 years after planting. The breast height diameter (bhd) is expected to be 30 cm or 12 inches. I also planted 100 Gmelina trees that are faster growing trees. The trees are ready for harvest in just only 5 years.
Since I started planting trees in the area, I have influenced a few farmers to plant the same kind of trees in the same local area of Buliran.
Last year, a brush fire destroyed 2000 of my trees. This year, I saw the same fire that were deliberately sat on the "talahib" grass that spread very quickly. For awhile, I heard a crackling sound from my "bahay kubo", then I saw some smoke. I hurriedly ran at the fire site. Fortunately, the fire did not spread to my plantation.
Due to the incident that I experienced which gave me the scare of my life, I installed 2 big drums at the end of the plantation. The drums are always filled with water. I intend to improve my primitive fire fighting equipment with a water tank installed 30 ft or 7.6 m above ground level and a water pump, to control the fire, if there is fire in the vicinity of the plantation. I will also be hiring security guards to protect the plantation. Also, I hired workers who are now staying inside the compound and provided them with living accomodation.
