A Visit to an 18th Century Basi Wine Cellar (Article in Progress)

A Visit to an 18th Century Basi Wine Cellar

Living with Nature Center

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

 

 Late 18th Century Basi wine cellar retains the original brick walls and wooden structure made of hard wood. The jars are original as well, and have been in use through the years in brewing and aging of basi, and lately, different table wines from local fruits. Hermetically sealed jars await 2 to 5 years of aging (10 years on special occasions).    

Original basi wine cellar and jars (burnay) date back to the  18th century across six generations of continuous operation, interrupted only by the Second World War for five years. 

The cellar attracts researchers, students and tourists for its historical significance with the Spanish Galleon Trade, and technology of the old folks in making basi and its related products, principally vinegar (sukang Iloko). By now this jar of basi (right photo) is 15 years old. Unless opened, it remains longer in aging. The general rule is, the longer wine is aged, the more mellow it becomes. It's not really so. There are other factors to consider like damaged clay cap and leaching. And there's the basic rule that "only good wine mellows with age" (So with man, sages add.)

    

Table Wine products from 16 different local fruits growing in the Ilocos region. Table fruit wine making is a continuing project of developing  table wine from local orchard and wild fruits in the region, basically following the old basi wine and vinegar making process. 

 

Requiem to a Heritage Acacia Tree

 Requiem to a Heritage Acacia Tree

Living with Nature Center

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

"If you have never loved a tree, life's true magic has ceased to breathe."  - Angie Weiland-Crosby

Dr Abe V Rotor

Author points at an on-the-spot painting he made in 1976 of a standing heritage acacia tree. Adjacent to it is a outdoor furniture shop. San Vicente is famous for wood furniture industry. The painting graces the lobby of the San Vicente Municipal Hall in Ilocos Sur.

 

"A great acacia, with its slender trunk

 And overpoise of multitudinous leaves.

 (In which a hundred fields might spill their dew

 And intense verdure, yet find room enough)

 Stood reconciling all the place with green." 

          - Elizabeth Barrett Browning Internet

Author, with coeds from the University of Northern Philippines, pose

with the relics of the heritage acacia he painted in 1976 as seen above.

     "Life is like a tree. Every Leaf is a dream, it may be big or small. When the leaves fall, dreams disappear but when the trees have new leaves, life has new wonderful things." - Pinterest

    

Closeup of the mounted artwork.  It serves as a memorabilia, 

more than a biological specimen and work of art.           

"In Egyptian and early Judeo-Christian traditions, the acacia is linked to life after death and the soul's immortality. It symbolizes spiritual rebirth and the eternal nature of the human spirit." - Oak & Hyde Internet 

14 Natural Science Books in celebration of Earth Day April 22, 2026

Earth Day April 22, 2026

14 Natural Science Books 

Living with Nature Home Library

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Verses by Dr Abe V Rotor

Earth Day is a time to reflect on our responsibility to the planet.

Books are back in school, our home and community;

     take the backseat electronic learning, we pray;

knowledge gained through short cut and easy way,

     is like clouds over parched land drifting away. 

 "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed." - Mahatma Gandhi

 

The more senses we use in our study,

arduous and tough the lesson may be;

see, hear, touch, taste, smell to the full

with our mind, heart, body and soul.

“If the environment is happy, people will laugh and your grief will go away.”- Srinivas Mishra

Nature is the greatest teacher, 

and she is everywhere,

  ready to guide us to the answer;

   with tender love and care.

“The earth is always changing...readjusting to our existence. Each era is full of unique challenges”- Val Uchendu

  

“You don’t live on earth, you are passing through.”- Rumi

 

Science and literature make a loving pair,

     with the left and right brains together;

reason and creativity make an adventure

     exciting outdoor or in an armchair.

“We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”- Albert Einstein

 

These science books are classics:

non-fiction, based on true story;

move over Rowling, Jules Verne;

welcome Teale, Fabre, Peattie.

 

“We are on Earth to take care of life. We are on Earth to take care of each other.”- Xiye Bastida

  

“The time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now. You can make history or be vilified by it.”- Leonardo DiCaprio

“I firmly believe nature brings solace in all troubles.” —Anne Frank

Who owns life but the Great Creator,

     humble and benevolent to all?

And man, self-anointed guardian,

     claims his own, even after his Fall.

“To leave the world better than you found it, sometimes you have to pick up other people’s trash.” - Bill Nye ~

12 Practical Household Tips

12 Practical Household Tips

Dr Abe V Rotor

This is a continuing list of practical household management tips, which can be followed easily, and shared with the members of the family, friends, in the school and community. Learn and perfect each tip through demonstration. Illustrate or photograph each tip. Compile these tips into a manual.

1. Smudging of mango induces flowering early or out of season. This is of course advantageous to the grower, but it may do some physiological harm to the tree. This is likened to humans and animals that are induced to produce more progeny, or to change the normal life cycle of the organisms.

Smudging may also drive away pest, but at the same time pollutes the air. Right, Smudging-induced inflorescence of mango. (Acknowledgement: Internet)

2. Don't dispose used cooking oil in sink. It reacts with detergent and solidifies like soap - the same process called saponification, blocking drainage canal and sewer.

3. Cut spent toothpaste tube and glean on remaining content. You can have as much as five brushing. Use remaining paste as hand-wash to remove grease and fishy odor.

4. Make your own hand wash detergent. Scrape soap with knife, dissolve in water. Presto! You can have all the hand wash you need. Use your formula to refill empty dispensers. Label with the soap you used and the dilution you made. Avoid commercial concentrated brands - they are too strong, and dangerous to children.

5. Protect tip of pencil with rolled paper. This serves as cap to extend the life of the pencil, and prevent accident. Use gloss, colored paper - the kind used as promo leaflets. Instead of refusing, or throwing it away, you can make a beautiful pencil cap. You can also roll it as extender when the pencil becomes too short, thus maximizing its use.

6. Garden pots from PET bottles (1- to 2-li). It’s free, whereas commercial garden pots are expensive. Cut at midsection with a sharp knife or blade; puncture three equidistant holes on the side, an inch from the base, not at the bottom. This is to keep reserve water for the plant. Plant one kind per pot: oregano, alugbati, kamote, kangkong, ginger, onion, garlic, mustard, pechay, and the like. Scrape some topsoil for your planting medium. There’s no need of fertilizer and pesticide. Keep a pot or two of growing garlic or onion, also ginger; they are insect repellants.

Rice Weevil (Sitiphilus oryza)

7. Rice weevil can be controlled by placing crushed bulb of garlic in the stored rice. Loosely wrap garlic with cloth or paper. Cover the box. In a day or two, the weevils succumb to the garlic odor. Others simply escape.

8. Sugar solution extends the life of cut flowers.
In horticulture, they call this pulsing, a technique of providing nourishment and extending the shelf life of cut flowers. This technique lengthens vase life twice as much. It allows buds to open and postpones stem collapse, while it enhances freshness of the opened flowers.

Pulsing for roses is done by immersing the stem ends for one to three hours in 10% sugar solution, and for gladiolus 12 to 24 hours in 20% sugar solution. Daisies, carnation, chrysanthemums, and the like are better handled if harvested and transported in their immature stage, then opened by pulsing. It is best to cut the stem at an angle, dipped 6 to 12 hours in 10% sugar solution compounded with 200 ppm of 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate, 100 ppm citric acid. Best results are obtained at cool temperature and low relative humidity.

9. Press the base of the jaw joint to relieve toothache. There’s a saying that when your tooth aches, there’s nothing you can do about it except to take painkiller. Mabuti pa ang sakit ng tiyan. At least for stomach ache you can manage to find a comfortable position, or press the painful part to secure relief.

But here is a simple remedy Dr. Vanda Hernandez, school dentist of St. Paul University QC, demonstrated which I found to be effective. There is a mass of nerve cells called Gasserian ganglion that connects the nerves of the gums and teeth, and their surroundings. Now this is how the simple remedy works. Open your mouth wide, feel where the joint of the jaw is located. Now close your mouth and press this nerve center with the finger until you obtain relief. Do this along the side of the affected tooth. Repeat until pain subsides. Once you have practiced the technique, you can do it discreetly even with people around when the need arises.

10. Smoke therapy (suob) – old folks’ aroma therapy. smudging of mango to induce flowering photos
Basang, my auntie who took care of me when I was a child, was sick and dying. Doctor Catalino, our rural physician, gave her injection but her condition did not improve, and now she was in a pit of convulsion. As a last ditch Cousin Bistra who knew something about herbal cure gathered leaves of kamias (Averrhoa balimbi) and roasted it on charcoal until a characteristic aroma began to fill the room. Fanning it over the patient face, with prayers chanted, Basang began to calm down, the color of her skin improved, and soon fell into deep sleep.

Dr Precila Delima related a practice among the Ibanag of Cagayan of using suob by mothers who have just given birth. Garlic and shallot onion (sibuyas tagalog) are roasted on charcoal, and packed with cloth. While still warm the patient sits on the pack for several minutes, with her whole body covered with blanket. She perspires profusely, eliminating wastes and toxins from her body. The whole procedure is closely attended to by the “olds” in the family with the direction of the village manghihilot or homegrown midwife (comadrona or partera Ilk.). Old folks believe that this practice is important because it drives out evil spirits or wards them off in order to prepare the way the mother faces the crucial responsibility of motherhood – after child bearing follows the bigger task - child rearing.

11. If the father or mother leaves the house, place the clothes he or she last worn beside the sleeping child so that he goes into deep sleep. This is pheromones in action. Pheromones are chemical signals for bonding in the animal world, and among humans. Like the queen bee that keeps its colony intact through pheromones, so we are attracted by a similar odor, although of a less specific one. People are compatible through smell. Pheromones are left in clothes and other belongings, so that a baby may remain fast asleep as if he were in his mother’s or father’s arms.

12. Don’t eat between meals, old folks advise.
Coffee break is a corporate invention, and snacks are the first version of fast food, thanks to capitalism. So why take heed of the old advice?

Well, let’s look at it this way. Our old folks take heavy meals, mainly rice or corn, depending on the region they live, and they do not eat anything in between meals. Yet they work for long hours, and are healthy. How is that?

Starch in cereals is polysaccharide, which means that it has to be broken down into simple sugar before it is “burned” by the body to release energy. Starch has to be hydrolyzed with the aid of enzyme (amylase) found in our digestive system. Glucose, the ultimate product is broken down through oxidation (respiration), providing the needed energy for various body functions. This transformation takes hours, releasing energy throughout the process, and by the time the fuel is exhausted, it is time for the next meal. This is a simple test. Have you experienced having a grain of rice unknowingly tucked between the gums and teeth? After an hour of so, the grain taste sweet. It means that the grain is undergoing hydrolysis – from starch to sugar.

White sugar (sucrose), on the other hand is directly burned, after it has been split into two monosaccharides. That is why too much white sugar leads to high blood sugar – if we do not burn it – and may in the long run become the cause of diabetes.

This eating regimen of old folks may apply to manual workers, principally in the field. Today we find this virtually impossible to follow. First, we need a lot of energy, mainly for the brain, and secondly, we are already accustomed to having snacks. In fact many of us never stop eating. A foreigner once commented, “Filipinos are always eating.” What with all the advertisements - from TV commercials to giant billboards - and the proliferation of food carts and stores. ~

Your first work is a masterpiece

Your first work is a masterpiece

Dr Abe V Rotor

Old photograph of one of my earliest paintings. I never saw

this painting again. (oil on plywood, 10" x 12") circa 1965

Don't throw away your early work

if not in favor of your judgment

or of others; you are not the critic

nor they, but time and art,

for it could be your masterpiece,

the window of your soul,

its expression at the break of dawn,

when light is fresh and pure.

and through the years to old age,

your work unfolds to the world,

the stirrings of your youth

seeking perfection in dream.

And imperfection is all it shows,

a felled tree half buried lives on

in a hill of flowering weeds,

eternal and beautiful.~

Green Madonna and Child

Earth Day and Mothers' Day 2026*   

Green Madonna and Child      

"Our Holy Lady and Child, please help us
save our dying Mother Earth."- avr

Dr Abe V Rotor

Relief painting of Madonna and Child in acrylic AVR 2015 

  

Faceless, shrouded with smog, seated on a volcano,
    this Madonna and Child of my imagination
moved my fingers, and touched my heart and soul.
    Forgive me for my irreverent interpretation.

I am a humble artist seeking meaning of art to life,

     a new consciousness, a re-birth,
to bring prayer into action, our Lady and Holy Child
    in saving our dying Mother Earth.~

* Earth Day is an annual event on April 22, 2026 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally through earthday.org including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. Wikipedia

* Mother’s Day is celebrated on different dates around the world. It falls on the second Sunday of May in the U.S, and the Philippines (May 10, 2026). It origins can be traced to ancient Greeks and Romans who held festivals to honor the mother goddess Rhea and Cybele. History.com. 

Living with Nature Garden: "It's a small world."

"It's a small world.*" 

Living with Nature Garden

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

  

"There's so much that we share

That it's time we're aware

It's a small world after all.

It's a small world after all."

It's a small world after all

Photos and Text by Dr Abe V Rotor 

"In these trying times, be resourceful and practical. 

Go back to the basics at the grassroots." - avr

 

Onion and kutchai in plastic pots by the kitchen window. 

Kamote tops at arm's distance from the salad bowl.

Oregano - native and variegated- for cough.  Pick a pot (instead of cutting) 

and take it to the patient.

Colors and shadows make a perfect blend in a garden

Bamboo seedlings from cuttings, as simple as sticking a node into the soil.

  

Hanging vegetables.  Grow vegetables on fence like kangkong, 

kamote, alugbati

Limonsito fruit wine. Fermentation process applies to other 

local fruits, such as guyabano, guava, mango, etc 

Homemade recipes: pickles of green papaya, bell pepper, raisin and sukang Iloko (Ilocos vinegar); laing - gabi stalks and runners, coconut (gata'), 

and tinapa (dried fish)

 

Dahon ng sili (pepper tops) completes the best tinola (chicken stew).  

Yellowing leaves? Transfer to a bigger pot and change the soil with new. 

 

Homemade salted eggs in 28 days. Just brine water, no dye or mud.

Local fruits - banana, avocado, mango - instead of apple or imported grape.

 

Preserving indigenous species (native genetic conservation),

bastion of natural resistance and immunity.

Sterilize clean bottles in sunlight, a practical technology..

A night of Nature's music (chirping, croaking, hissing,

or simply the passing of breeze).

                         * Based on a song 

It's a Small World

By Robert B. Sherman, Richard M. Sherman

It's a world of laughter

A world of tears

It's a world of hopes

And a world of fears

There's so much that we share

That it's time we're aware

It's a small world after all (3x)

It's a small, small world

There is just one moon

And one golden sun

And a smile means

Friendship to ev'ryone

Though the mountains divide

And the oceans are wide

It's a small world after all (3x)

It's a small, small world

Source: LyricFind ~