Wednesday, October 28, 2015

The World in his Paint Brush

The World in his Paint Brush
Dr Abe V Rotor
 
Markus 2 author's grandson paints a mural 2015, QC

"Freedom in imagination, young as he is, while grownups yearn for expression outside the confines of art; who is the master then? Yet, the path that he takes is rough and uncertain, sans model and determination he'll miss his aim." - A V Rotor

"Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality." - Oscar Wilde

"It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression." - Henri Matisse

Monday, October 26, 2015

Living Pendulum

Living Pendulum
Dr Abe V Rotor

This cherry dangles free like a pendulum against the sun,
clings to the vine, ripening, and soon falls to the ground;
ephemeral are beauty and freedom to its creator bound.  ~

Painting in acrylic by the author

Versatile Vinegar for the Home and Workshop

    Versatile Vinegar for the Home and Workshop
      Dr Abe V Rotor

  1. Clean eyeglasses. Wipe each lens with a drop of vinegar.
  2. Freshen cut flowers. Add 2 tbsp vinegar and 1 tbsp sugar for each quart of water.
  3. Polish car chrome. Apply full strength vinegar with a soft cloth.
  4. Dissolve rust from bolts and other metals. Soak in full strength vinegar.
  5. Clean windows with vinegar and water.
  6. Rub vinegar on the cut end of uncooked ham to prevent mold. It will not change the taste of your ham.
  7. Add vinegar to laundry rinse water. This will remove all soap and prevent yellowing.
  8. Remove hairspray and other p[product buildups from your hair. Massage one ounce of full strength vinegar into hair and leave on for about 20 minutes. Rinse with warm water. The shampoo and rinse your hair as usual.
  9. Boil vinegar and water in pots to remove stains.
  10. Pour undiluted vinegar in coffee maker to remove sediments. Run through like you are brewing coffee. Let cool and run through again if your coffee maker is full of sediment. When done, run in plain water through to rinse a few times.
  11. Remove berry stains from hands with vinegar.
  12. Wash hands with diluted vinegar after working with cement. This will restore smoothness and color of your hands.
  13. Artists use vinegar for etching and blending paint materials.
  14. Soak your fingernails in vinegar for 20 minutes two times a week to strengthen them. They will grow longer a lot faster than normal.
  15. Bring vinegar to a boil in an old saucepan. Reduce to shimmer and place paint brushes with hardened paint on them in the pan. Leave until you see paint loosen. Wash brushes with soapy water to soften the brushes.
  16. Dampen a cloth with vinegar and wipe counters, canisters and other containers to keep them smelling fresh and clean.
  17. Place small containers of vinegar all around the house to take out cigarette smoke smell. Or wave a cloth you soaked in vinegar around the house to clean the air odors.
  18. Pour baking soda down clogged drain. Add boiling vinegar to it and your drain should unclog. If not, your clog is needing a commercial drain opener.
  19. To tighten cane bottom or caneback chairs sponge them with a hot solution of half vinegar and half water. Place the chairs out in the hot sun to dry. They will tighten back into shape.
  20. To eliminate mildew. Dust and odors. Wipe down walls with vinegar-soaked cloth. ~

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Recycling Farm Wastes

In observance of the International Year of Soils 2015 
Day of celebration: December 5


Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday

Home made compost from plant residues. Lagro, QC 

1. Crops leave a lot of waste after harvest. The most common wastes for composting are rice straw, corn stover, peanut and mungo hay, banana stalk, ipil-ipil, wood and coconut by-products.

• We are getting in return very little of the value of the fertilizer we apply to our crops. We don’t even get half the value of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, the most important ingredients of chemical fertilizers.
30 to 60 % for N,
10 to 35 % for P, and
15 to 30% for K.

• For rice, there are more nutrients removed from the soil that go into the straw than the grain. Here is a comparison. (Grain versus straw, kg nutrient/MT)
Nitrogen: 10.5 - 7.0
Phosphorus: 4.6 – 2.3
Potassium: 3.0 – 17.5
Magnesium: 1.5 – 2.0
Calcium: 0.5 - 3.5

• Rice straw contains 85-90 percent of potassium (K) of the biomass. Thus much greater amounts of K must be applied to maintain soil supply where straw is removed.

2. Farm animals are ideal recyclers.

• Our Philippine carabao is the most efficient feed converter. Of the ruminant animals it has a digestive system that can extract the most nutrients from roughage. Thus it can survive long dry spells, and its manure is excellent fertilizer.

• Native chickens are more resistant than pure breeds to pest and unfavorable weather. They thrive on palay and corn; they forage in the field, and glean on leftovers. They are therefore, more economical to produce, tastier and free of antibiotic residues and artificial growth hormones.

• Goats thrives on farm by-products and unwanted plants. Practically anything that grows in the field is food for goats. Goats however, must be tethered or kept in pens.

• Another recycling project is vermiculture, the culture of earthworms for composting, bait for fishing, and source of protein supplement in feeds. Earthworm castings are excellent soil conditioners for ornamentals and garden crops.

3. Recycle wastes from market and kitchen. Vegetable trimmings, and waste from fish and animals require efficient collection, segregation and processing into biogas and organic fertilizer.

Fruits in season that otherwise go to waste are made into table wine of different flavors. Typhoon or drought affected sugarcane make excellent natural vinegar and molasses.

4. There are many plants growing in the field that are taken for granted or considered weeds. They are Nature’s Gifts. Tap them instead. Examples: Lantana camara as natural pesticide; oregano as natural medicine for cough and sore throat; chichirica as drug against cancer; pandan as spice and condiment; eucalyptus as liniment and cold drops; bunga de China for toothpaste, lagundi for fever and flu.

5. Water harvesting and conserving: Runoff water is waste. Small Water Impounding Projects (SWIP) are popular in many parts of the world where water is seasonal. Bigger ones can even generate electricity for the locality. The Bureau of Soils and Water Management of the Department of Agriculture has developed the technology on water impounding.
x x x

NOTE: Please add more information to further enrich this article, particularly on those practices in farm recycling indigenous in your place.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

A Child's Parable of The Black Puppy


Anna Christina R Rotor, 12
School Project on CLIVE, 
Year 2 Malvar, Teacher Remy
October 20, 1997
Unedited
Pastel drawing by Anna Christina, 12 (1997)  
It was late in the evening when three children searched for their pet,  wondering what had happened to it.  Their dog was crying in pain and they didn't know where to find. Suddenty, at a corner of their garage, they saw the missing, white dog.  The dog gave birth to three little puppies.  The children were so delighted to see a very beautiful, white puppy with a cute, pink nose.  But they became disappoited  upon seeing two black, ugly puppies, which they didn't even had the color of their mother.  So the children poured all their love to the white puppy.  They even had the plan to make this dog an intelligent one.  After a few days, they noticed that the other black puppy was very weak.  Not for long, it died, which they didn't mind too much.

One morning, the children were shocked to see their favorite puppy lying helplessly and trying to catch its breath. They did everything they could do to save the puppy but it was too late and died.  They children felt very, very sad and tried not to cry.  But then they realized that there is still a black puppy left whom they could love like their love for their favorite pet.

They leaned to love the black puppy and took good care of it.  They taught him different dog tricks and trained him to be a smart dog.

Many years passed, the children were very proud to see the black, ugly puppy grew into a very beautiful, talented and intelligent dog.  

Author's Comment:  Based on my experiences related in this parable, there is one experience that I will never forget.  It is an experience of disappointment and contentment.  At age 10, my favorite cousin died at an early age.  I always let the time pass longing for him.  Just then, I realized that I could do nothing to bring him back.  I finally knew that I could go on with my life without my sorrows.  I began to enjoy my life again and learned to love my other cousins, who sometimes I hated most.  I learned to be more considerate to them and we grew up in a better relationship.

With my unforgettable experience, there is one important lesson that I learned: The one you love least may sometimes be the one you'll love most. ~ 

Monday, October 5, 2015

Yes, we can grow wheat in the Philippines

Dedicated to the late Reynaldo A Tabbada PhD, professor and dissertation adviser of the author, UST Graduate School 

Yes, we can grow wheat in the Philippines

Wheat is the third most important staple food of Filipinos after rice and corn.  Ironically we import it to the last grain to make the popular pandesal and pasta, and a wide variety of bakery products.  Its milling byproducts constitute an important feed ingredient for livestock, piggery and poultry. 
 
Dr. Abe V. Rotor  

Yes, the Filipino can. We love to eat pandesal, a unique and distinctly Filipino kind of bun. Pandesal comes from wheat flour. We import the mother material, the wheat grain, mainly from the United States. Eight (or more) companies which grouped themselves into the Philippine Flour Millers Association or PAFMI import the grain, mill it into flour, and sell it to the baker. The bran called pollard, by-product of milling is formulated into feeds, together with feed wheat which they also import directly. Virtually the same members formed another group, Philippine Association of Feed Millers or PAFMIL. They sell feeds to the livestock and poultry raisers. They also sell meat and related products which they directly import.  These are made into hot dog, hamburger, et al.

 Author with baked products from local wheat harvest
. 
Here is a scenario for the pandesal eater. The wheat comes from the prairies of North American covering the Dakotas, Kansas, Minnesota’s, Missouri and a dozen more States. A state may be bigger than the Philippines in land area. The American farmer who cultivates hundreds, if not thousands, of acres using airplane and railway systems, plants his wheat either before winter (the germinated seed remains dormant or overwinters), or in the spring. Thus, when we import, we specify winter or spring wheat.

Generally the spring hard wheat is preferred for making pandesal, although it is more costly. We import the premium wheat, one of the best in the world. Just to make pandesal! Sixty percent of total volume is made into pandesal. The soft type of wheat (varieties with less of the leavening substance called gluten), is made into cakes, pastries and crackers. There is also the durum wheat or pasta, which are made into macaroni or spaghetti, mainly by the PAFMI members, too. They make those ready-in-two minutes and instant noodles, pancit canton, mami, soups, etc.


 
Standing crop of wheat on a typical ricefield in the Philippines; newly threshed wheat grain. 

Now, where is my pandesal? Either it is shrinking or taking new shapes, or both. Go to the popular bakeshops, they have various versions of pandesal. Of course with different product presentation - and prices. That is why pandesal is difficult to standardize, and more difficult to socialize. Not even during the martial law days. How could it be a poor man’s breakfast? Where is the control button? Well at least, during  Arturo Tanco’s time as DA secretary, wheat importation was in the hands of the National Grains Authority, under PD 4. and the members of the PAFMI and PAFMIL got their allocations of grain to mill and sell. From the revenues of NGA, warehouses and other post harvest facilities for rice and corn farmers were put up. In short, NGA without national budget, depended on corporate source, mainly from wheat importation, subsidized the small rice and corn farmer. Thus was the golden era of the grain industry in the country.

So the wheat grain arrives here. After importation tax, the grain goes to the giant bins and mill complexes of the PAFMIL members concentrated in Metro Manila, others in Cebu and Mindanao. Total value has greatly increased to some 5 billion pesos yearly (low estimate). One can imagine the staggering figure if we include feed wheat and pollard which the PAFMIL also imports. Plus, of course, the imported corn, fish meal and soyabean meal which are important feed ingredients. Next time you eat hamburger, fried chicken or pork chop, think of food on a pie chart. What part is Filipino?


Threshing wheat by hand is similar to rice. Threshing is much easier, and wheat stalk is kinder to the hand. The hay has higher nutrient value than rice, and is easier for animals to digest. Author's son Marlo, then 5 years old, takes pride in displaying a freshly harvested wheat from a farmer's field.

Well, at least the pork in a can of pork and beans is ours. But it is not entirely. The corn comes from Thailand. It is cheaper to import corn than to cultivate it here.  Analogously, it is cheaper to import rice than grow it here. No wonder we (the government) import more than one million metric tons of rice every year – from Thailand, Vietnam, China, Pakistan and India! Why should we not grow enough rice and plant wheat, too, and have pandesal?

Pandesal is shrinking, it is getting more expensive. And this is the reason we should plant our own wheat.  As shown in earlier figures from our local wheat varieties which we planted on rice paddies before the EDSA revolution, local wheat can reduce our dependence on imported wheat. We planted Trigo 2 (for cakes and pastries) varieties which were developed by the Institute of Plant Breeding and UPLB. Farmer cooperators in the Ilocos region, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, and also in the Visayas and Mindanao planted for straight five years wheat on their ricefield as second crop under a packaged program initiated by DA, NFA, PCARRD and UPLB and other state universities.

Yes, we can grow wheat successfully in the Philippines. A proof other than the recent success is that during the Spanish period, farmers in Cagayan down to Batangas were growing a variety known as a Cagayan wheat. Wheat is very important to the church. We were then self-sufficient and even shipped part of our produce through the galleon. Read Frenchmen, de Gironierre’s autobiography, Half a Century in the Philippines.
  

 Interviews on Wheat 
 As a farmer, I get good average yield, as high as 3.1 MT per hectare, higher than world’s average, comparatively profitable with other cash crops after rice. I use the same tools and equipment as with irrigation, fertilization, and post harvest processes. With the government support I am assured of both market and price of my produce. I also have wheat bran and hay for my livestock, better than those of rice. And I can raise poultry and livestock.

As a consumer, locally grown wheat can be made into arroz caldo, ridgepole, wheat cakes - other than the conventional pandesal, pan de bara, pan de lemon pan de coco, cakes and pastries. Now I can eat more than the average per capita level which is 10.3 to 12 kg, because it becomes more affordable, especially so that wheat comes in various preparations, including rice-wheat mix. In this case I will have higher protein intake as high as 12 percent for whole wheat, 8 to 9 percent for regular flour. Rice has barely half protein level. I get 75 percent starch, so with rice. But I get gluten, the substance that makes wheat, and only wheat, naturally leavening. I get also high crude fiber, oil, minerals and vitamins. Now you see why a big American individual has but sandwich for lunch. Of course, what is in between the bread equally counts.

Wheat, yes, we can adopt you again on our fertile soil and under our beautiful sky and in the loving, faithful toiling hands of our farmers. Wheat, you can be part of our dining table, of our children’s baon, of our farm animals' feed, of our fiesta’s merriment, and not only in hamburger and pandesal. We love you better under a Pilipino name.~

Triticale - a cross between wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale). Triticale was successfully grown on the Benguet in the seventies.


As a rule, triticale combines the high yield potential and good grain quality of wheat with the disease and environmental tolerance (including soil conditions) of rye. It is grown mostly for forage or fodder although some triticale-based foods can be purchased at health food stores or are to be found in some breakfast cereals, bread and other food products such as cookies, pasta, and pizza dough. The protein content is higher than that of wheat although the gluten in fraction is less. The grain has also been stated to have higher levels of lysine than wheat. As a feed grain, triticale is already well established and of high economic importance.

NOTE: Author served as national coordinator in wheat production in the Philippines, a joint program of NFA (NGA then), DA, and PCARRD under President Ferdinand Marcos' administration. He represented the Philippines in a conference, presented a paper on growing wheat in the Philippines, at the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento del Mais y Trigo (CIMMYT), Mexico.

Dr Reynaldo A Tabbada was the youngest head of the Department of Biology, University of the Philippines, Diliman, which earned a distinct reputation of Par Excellence during his term. He was also professorial lecturer of the University of Santo Tomas Graduate School. 

A Green World of Nature in Pastel

                 A Green World of Nature in Pastel  
Pastel Drawing of Sis Veny V Rotor

“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs, —
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress its music.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

A basketful of oranges

"Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand."
 - Saint Mother Teresa

Flow gently under the bridge

“Love is the bridge that joins all the worlds together.” – Frederick Lenz

Green turtles 

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." - John Lubbock ~

Saturday, October 3, 2015

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:"

"For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven."

"There is a time to listen to God through His creation."
         an acrylic painting by Dr Abe V Rotor

“For everything there is a season, 
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”

This sacred list from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 represents all the seasons and the important changes of our lives. Some are happy times, others sad; some are productive while others seem wasteful; some inspire peace and others bring pain. (Internet)