Suria Helang Lui: 7 years later Part 1.

Time has definitely flown by since I have started to focus on the piece of land that I bought in 2007, whilst I was still working on the corporate world.  At that time it was a jungle - you can play Tarzan and swing from tree to tree from the long vines that hung off the trees.  The first 3 years I spent the time developing the land with minimal soil disturbance, widened and deepened a dried-out stream to make my fish pond, studied what vegetation was there that I wanted to keep and what I wanted to remove and to figure out what I wanted to do.  Although many thought that I was doing things the hard way since I didn't just bulldoze the land, I feel that it is the right decision since we retained the topsoil that had taken decades to form.  This provided a good base for the soil condition for planting.

After 1 year of studying the contour of the land, I had a fish pond created that flowed from one side of the land out to Sg. Lui, which allowed for me to have an inflow and an outflow as well as a flood control measure.  We "pulled" our own polypipe (2 sets) : 1 for farm use and 1 for the fish pond.  This allowed for us to have a constant flow of water coming in one end of the pond thus making it more like a river than a fish pond.  The end result is our fish pond has constant fresh water incoming, no aeration needed for the fish and no smell as well as river fish and shellfish coming in which provided food for our fish.  We maximised what nature has and try to minimize impact to the river system.  The water fountain we have requires no pumps or mechanised units but just the application of physics.  All this enabled us in rearing fresh water fish that didn't have a "muddy" smell with a natural sweetness.  Subhanallah.  I tried rearing various species over the years but in the last year, we have narrowed it down to 3 species: Catfish (keli), Tilapia and Lampam.  We do have other species in there such as Kelah Daun, Seluang, Tilan and various other types of river fish that are the norm in the rivers in this area.  Over the years, we have made some modifications and adjustment, to suit with the water flow, fish production operations as well as to ensure we have sufficient protection, in shaa Allah,  from sudden rise in the river water levels.

My father used to say that my farm was like a village as I had all sorts of plants and trees.  I didn't focus on one or two types of plants like most commercial farms,  Being in the heart of the local fruit area - durian, mangosteen, cempedak, jackfruit and duku langsat - many thought I should focus on one or two of these fruits.  My concept is different: ultimately I wanted the farm to be able to provide for a complete food diet - fresh fruits, vegetables, proteins and carbohydrates hence the idea of a self-sufficient integrated farm.  It is definitely a different concept because I envisioned that some day, we would be able to do end-to-end and by choice, be independent of suppliers and to be able to produce not only raw goods but processed products - all done free from toxic chemicals and as naturally as possible.

I spent the first 3 years experimenting why grows best, how to grow it better, how to care for the land and how to strike  environmental balance.  Today, I have lost count of how many types of plants and trees we have although I do try from time to time to catalog what I have but I have to admit, it is not high on my to-do list.

Apart from the fish pond, we have a greenhouse.  Many have asked me: "Do we really need to have a greenhouse and why?".  I built the greenhouse for a few reasons:

1. To grow vegetables that require more care
2. To have an area for me to propagate plants especially in creating new seedlings
3. To have an area that I can still have an activity on those rainy days
4. To be able to experiment in a more controlled setting

Part of the joy of farming is to be able to experiment and find ways of doing things that are more attuned to nature and minimising damage to the environment.  I also call this my oxygenation room as when I work in the greenhouse during the day, the plants in there are actively producing oxygen as a by-product from photosynthesis (remember the biology class).

From a fruit production perspective, I try to make it so that we are able to have fruits year-round hence we have seasonal fruits like mangosteen, jack fruit, cempedak, jam madu as well as non-seasonal fruits like papayas and bananas.  At the farm, at last count we have over 25 varieties of bananas - all non-GMO, hormone-free and local.  Hence week-to-week, the banana variety produced from the the farm varies.  I view our collection of banana plants as part of the preservation of our heritage.  Each variety has its unique qualities from the inflorescence, pseudo stem, leaves and fruit.

From the experiments and taste, we have narrowed our papayas to three varieties: the "orange" flesh exotica, red exotica and red "sekaki".  I chose these because they are the tastiest and sweetest for me and it seems that our customers enjoy them too.
In the beginning, we only had a few plants and weekly have a few fruits.  We also had to work on scheduling planting so that we will have fruits weekly as there comes a time when the papaya tree is no longer viable and will need to be replaced.  Hence, we now produce seedlings twice a year from our own seed collection.

This farm is chemical pesticide and fertiliser-free.  In the beginning, I depended fully on commercial organic pest control and fertiliser.  Over the years, I conducted my own farm-based research and experiments and now we are 70-30 on our own fertilisers to dependence on commercial products for our needs.  We now produce our own liquid concentrate for fertiliser as well as pest control and compost soil.  The ingredients used are farm-produced with the exception of raw sugar, molasses and sea salt.  Recently, we introduced them as our ORGME line of products.  These are the same fertilisers that we use at the farm in conjunction with 2 other types of commercial organic fertilisers.  The target is in the future, we can produce all our own fertilisers and making the farm in control of our fertilisers and independence from manufacturers.

In Part 2, we will relate our vegetables and herbals - the underlying produce of the farm - without compromising on our values and principles :)