My Pisang Tanduk

Our bananas have started ripening since two months ago but I did not have the opportunity to post any of the bananas photo. For the time being, only three types of bananas have been ripening which is Pisang Nangka, Pisang Tanduk and Pisang Emas. My favorite is Pisang Tanduk, of course for its taste and texture. For me it has Jackfruit taste with a light sweet aroma while its texture is quite hard even though it’s on ripening stage, that's  making it very suitable for frying.  In fact, it is so popular among fried banana lovers for its texture. However, my husband shows less interest in planting Pisang Tanduk. One of the reasons is that Pisang Tanduk rarely produce big, nice and beautiful bunches compare to Pisang Nangka and Pisang Emas in our farm . He always said that our soil and rainfall distribution did not favorably for cultivating this type of banana; and he is planning to exclude Pisang Tanduk in our next Planting Calendar. But I am against his idea, for me, our planting time was wrong last year. We started planting Pisang Tanduk during drought season . I remembered clearly, (before we got our water pump from the supplier), we have to carry water in the bucket from the stream down the hill, to water hundred of our Pisang Tanduk. (I cannot forget how tiring the task was). Most probably that is how our Pisang Tanduk never produce amazing bunches as Pisang Nangka and Pisang Emas. So I told my husband, it is ok if we can just give them a chance this year, with lots of rain and organic fertilizer; let see how they are doing. If they fail to produce, then we can consider planting them for family consumption only.

Our first bunch of Pisang Emas, we distributed it among family and friends

Our first bunch of Pisang Nangka, its weight around 25kg

Two Bunches of Pisang Emas

I admit that these Pisang Tanduk do not look impressive

Pisang Nangka stand side by side with Pisang Tanduk

My husband always keeps a bunch of Pisang Emas for my Son

My husband gives a bunch of Pisang Nangka to Wak Isa, and he makes banana chips for us, so nice and crispy..

First born at the Air Karah Pen

These are the babies that are first born in our Air Karah Pen. They are 20 days old today. Both babies and the mother look ok. When I visited Little Farm last weekend both of them already followed their mother browsing near the river. Sari lets the babies out of their confinement area every evening for about two hours so that they can have some evening exercise. Two months after the tragedy that took half of our goats population, the presence of  these two babies was something to be cheering for and they are catharsis to my heart. 

 The mother helping her babies finds the nipples

Approximately two hours after the birth

15 days of age

Haze is coming to town...

Haze... Haze... And haze.. Yesterday the Air Pollution Index  was 295, now it's going up to 487+. Every year we experience the same situation but no concrete preventive action has been taken to ease the problem. 

On last Monday night, As we entered the Selangor State, (we arrived at the state from Little Farm around 11 at night) I felt like I am entering a fogging zone. When we reached home, my son greeted us with the news that the government already ordered all schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor to be close starting Monday. So I asked my children to stay inside the house and cancel all their sports activities. 

Yesterday, during my site visit to the new hospital project, I myself experienced some dizziness due to exposure to the haze. If I can't stand the haze in a few hours, I wonder how my husband and his fellow traffic police officer coping with the situation along the highway. Heavy haze plus heavy traffic. 

Today, I just sit in my office doing some administrative works ( and keep on wondering why in Indonesia farmers need to do open burning in large skills every year, isn’t it weird? )

View from level 4 of the hospital building yesterday

Today situation getting worse, with the API is shooting up to 487. If API reaches 500+,  I think the government will release the emergency order to close all office and business premises.

Even though the haze situation is worsening some parents just let their children playing at the hospital mini playground

What We Did Last Sunday : 16 June 2013

Body aches and fatigue that’s how I describe our condition (my maid and I) last Sunday. Both of us never do a hard workout before, but last Sunday we went down to the muddy area down the hill to plant some herbs. Salem, Pegaga, Kesum dan Keladi is the species that needs a lot of water or muddy area to grow. Since our back yard quite dry and we never trust Sari and Wak Mus in watering our herbs, we have to look for muddy areas to plant them. We have no choice except to go down the hill along the rubber tree terrace to reach the muddy area near the stream. Go down the hill was not a problem but going up was a different story. Once again Wak Isa, my husband's office mate, become our main seedlings contributor. He provides us with yam suckers and rooted cutting selom (water celery),  pegaga (pennywort) and kesom (Vietnamese coriander).

My maid in action, she is a diabetic patient, I felt worried if she can't stand in the afternoon heat, but she said "boleh.."

We don't aspect the area so muddy, we only use slipper and sock, supposedly we use farm shoes

Water celery, they need shady area but we can't provide that, let's see whether they can stand direct sunlight or not

pokok kesum

A line of pegaga

close up the pegaga

Some said muddy area suitable for yams.

We also relocated some yams that I planted nearly six months ago, they look unhealthy and small maybe because I planted them in a sandy area.

Beside planted marginal water plant, we also planted pokok kari (curry tree) and Scrambling Gynura (I do not know what Malay call it but Indonesian call it as pokok sambung nyawa) in our back yard. We got stem cutting pokok sambung nyawa and pokok kari (curry tree) from my house in Kuala Lumpur.

This was the condition of our potted pokok sambung nyawa in my house in KL, not so healthy

Behind our cabin kitchen

Since she has a green fingers, I asked her to plant all the herbs

Hopefully our pokok sambung nyawa would be in a nice condition after we left them for a week

Curry tree seedlings I am going to check its condition this weekend