The Green Life

I'm the fourth in a brood of four. My father was a son of a public school teacher and a municipal treasurer in Leyte. The didn't have much except for the drive to be educated. My mother comes from a family with vast lands, inherited from a geodetic engineer grandfather from Cavite who married a bagobo datu's daughter. My own grandfather was a farmer, pastor and police major rolled into one while my lola is a housewife running almost 30 hectares of land.
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I was born in Davao City but grew up in Manila until my father was killed during a drug bust somewhere in Quezon City. I could still remember the days in Manila when my Lola from Davao sends one sack of rice for us in Manila. When papa died, life was not easy so me and my sister were sent back to Davao - this was the beginning of green and armed life.
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Lolo had his farm planted with coconut trees. On Sundays (oh how I hated Sundays!), me and my sister are sent to the farm (we were living in the City because of the NPA) to plant coffee. When our coffee trees bore fruits, we were again sent every harvest. My mom helps when she's in Davao leaving her police work in Manila for a while. During our harvest, lolo was held at gunpoint by some NPAs and they took his gun. There was then another harvest that took us so late we cannot go back to the City anymore. My sister, lola and I had to sleep under the piano for fear the the NPA might notice there are people in the house and they might burn the house down.
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Years passed and mama was transferred to Davao City and NPA was moved farther to the north away from our farm. We then stayed more and more at the farm. Night at the farm was always fun filled with aninipot - FIREFLIES!!! Lola said that when a tree is filled with fireflies, taw-an daw (not like ours live there). We had HUGE chicken called caber. We could eat all the eggs we want. And 20 or so cows run in the farm with 3 albino carabaos. When it's mango harvest, people hung on mango trees like monkeys! Mama said one time that there lived a white monkey in our farm. To avoid my dismay since I could not find a white monkey, mom asked our trabahante to get a mi-lo (wild cat) for me and my sister. My unforgetable day was when a til-as (I really don't know its name in english! it is a hairy insect that lives in a talisay tree) managed to creep into my shirt! I had red itchy rashes all over my body! I also got stung by a bee. A big santol fruit dropped on top of my head during another harvest. Lola runs with a pamalo after me when I opened most of the coconut fruits (supposedly for copras) looking for buwa. There was also this one time when I could not open my mouth because of the dagta from a star apple fruit! I was dirty, I was happy, I was with nature.
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Now ten years later, my 6 year old cousin living in our farm does not even know what an aninipot is! She could not freely stroll in the farm because a 4 meter road was constructed somewhere in the middle of it. We lost our santol trees because my aunt decided to sell it as wood. Mama, the farmer in their brood, decided to keep two santol trees in her farm lot. We don't have a cow now. The talisay tree is cut - I somehow missed the til-as. My uncles decided to have their shares rented by rooster owners. So most of the 30 hectare land are now filled with rooster for sabong. The star apple trees were ALL cut by the rooster owners. They even cut down some of the coconut trees my lolo planted. The river running in the middle of the farm now overflows everytime it rains!
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When I look back, I feel that nature would have been better off with NPA than with my uncles. I'm with the fourth generation who will manage a little share on the farm. The diversity of organisms in our farm has deteriorated within a short span of time between my lolo and me. White monkeys were lost. Aninipots were lost. The farm is now surrounded with subdivisions while inside it are sabungan. I fear that one day, I will not leave anything green for my children, just like what the 2010 biodiversity clip has shown -- maybe children will just look at plants and animals in a video. Lucky if it were to happen. I beleive, when the balance of nature is tilted as plants and animals species become extinct, humankind will soon follow. We will lose the source of our economy, the source of our basic needs, and the thing that gives us a liveable atmosphere.

Energetics

Energetics is quite an amazing story about the path of energy from the sun going to how this energy supports life. No wonder why ancient people once thought of the Sun as God!

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Ecosystems, Wikipedia says, exist and operate by virtue of a flow of energy through the components of the system and thermodynamics forms the very basis of the biosphere.
Biosphere is the part of the Earth that supports life. It is basically composed of all the waters in the world where we find aquatic plants, animals and protists; all the land masses of the world where terrestrial living organisms thrive; and the atmosphere that surround the earth where birds fly.

Going back to energy: All Earth’s energy comes from the large ball of fire which we were introduced to as the Sun. Here, I’m going to discuss two energies that come from the Sun which supports life on Earth. Our understanding of these concepts would make us appreciate the value of interrelationship among living and nonliving things.

Sun gives off LIGHT ENERGY. This light energy sets up the process called photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, inorganic compounds such as carbon dioxide and water are “processed” with the help of light energy into food. When we are hungry, we do not have energy to do work. Now, energy from the sun is stored as potential energy in the form of “food” - particularly in the chemical bonds of C6H12O6 – in plants. Herbivores harvest this energy from plants through eating… and there goes the chain of predators in the food chain where energy is passed from the first trophic level of plants to the next and the next trophic levels.

Sun also gives off RADIANT ENERGY or energy of electromagnetic waves. This energy brings HEAT ENERGY which causes winds and current. Remember that the earth experiences differential heating because of its shape and its tilt. Winds and current cause brings KINETIC ENERGY – energy in motion. Also, because of heat, warming results in the evaporation of water. Therefore, hydrologic cycle is triggered. POTENTIAL ENERGY is possessed when water evaporates and begins to be stored in the clouds. As it falls back down to Earth, we have energy in the form of KINETIC.

If we put the key concepts of Food chains and energetics together, we could justify the importance of eating veggies! Veggies have more energy since they are in the first trophic level!