 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community Matters here. Aloha, I'm Glenn Martinez of Allamada Gardens and this is Ms. Natalie Cash, our farm manager at Allamada Gardens. Aloha. Yeah, so we're going on a trip today, right? Yes, we do. Where's our travel log to today? Well, we went over to the Philippines and we went to the island of the city of Bacolod. Bacolod, Bacolod, yeah. Yeah. And went Negroes, right? Negroes, Negroes. So we flew into Manila, right? And we went with John. John and Danny and the Consuelos Foundation. Yeah. Now Consuelos Foundation is a local charity here, right? Yes, they are. For here and Philippines. Right. So they spent about a third of their money in Hawaii and about two-thirds in the Philippines. Yeah. And so John was the boss at that time. He was the CEO of Consuelos Foundation. He's no longer with them right now, but he was a wonderful CEO for us. And Dr. Ben-Iran from University of Hawaii hooked us up with him. He sure did. And they funded multiple trips to the Philippines. And one of the most delightful ones was we flew into Manila and then we spent a day or two there. And then they hopped on a small plane at five in the morning and flew about an hour, hour and a half. You know, basically I'd go into the big island, a little bit longer than that. And we landed in a small island airport and we went to Negroes. And we went to, what's the name of the place? Welcome Home Foundation. Welcome Home Foundation, how was that? And it's a home and it's a foundation for the deaf students there. Yep, deaf and dumb, right? They have a place to stay, learn, give, and be part of the community. Yeah. So we go there, they look very young. There's so many aren't any old people who have looked so young for so long. You know, I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous. But the students that we work with were actually 18 to 24 years old. They had actually graduated high school and they were there for job placement. So here is Welcome Home Foundation, the literacy program and skills training. So they get out of high school and bingo, here they go. So this is where John and I flew into. And there it is, we landed in the airport and we were in a good spirit here. Glenn, it's always funny. And so we're happy to be there. We're in our Mad Hot Steams t-shirts here. And this is one of the young ladies and teachers here at that school. My Lord is. And John just seems to know everybody in the Philippines associated with it, and this was like basically two house lots where they removed the houses and turned it into a farm right on the edge of the city. And the campus for this deaf school is right next door. So as you pull up on the right hand side is this garden. And you can see there the diverse group that we had. Of course, it was a challenge because most of them were deaf. And so I had to learn sign language. And they had a lady there, the lady in yellow there, she was my sign language person. Agnes. Agnes, did a wonderful job in that. And this was really great. The Consola founded this. I was able to go there for a couple of days and work with them. And there's the lady in the straw hat. Yeah, that's Agnes. Angie is the lady in the yellow. Agnes, her mother started this school. 13 years. Yeah, she was literally raised up in the school and juggling hand to mouth and Consola Foundation discovered them and embraced them and funded a lot of their efforts. So it's really quite interesting to go there and to see what they can bring up. And so we'll show you some slides of the gardens of what we built there to make it unique. Before I got there, Danny had taken my plant and he had a contractor there donated his time and did it at cost. They built these cement tanks. They did the plywood on top. They drilled the holes. They had the plants going. You see my signature bucket there, the white bucket. That's called a bucket siphon. And we had done a trip earlier and taught them how to do it. Obviously they learned very well. They got them up and going. And then the background is the garden. Now this is the tank they put in. It's a cement side tank. It's only about two inches thick remarkably. And that thing is three feet up and three feet down. So it's actually like five or six feet deep. And you see the water coming back trickles in. They see the well in the back. When Natalie and I got there, they would spin that wheel and it has a rope. So you see the two blue pipes, one on either side. Well, the rope goes around the wheel. It goes down in the ground and then comes back up. And when you do it, the water comes out in the blue pipe. When we got there, they were filling up a five gallon bucket of water and carrying it over here. They sure were. And Natalie got tired of that real fast. So she put in that blue pipe and so they fill it directly. There's Danny. See our double tray there at the top on the right so that it drains all the way. There's Danny. He is a wonderful guy there. He was just up here in Honolulu doing a fundraising for some charity work that he did. But they welded all these tables together and we put them together and we got it operational, right? And every trip has gotten bigger and bigger. They sure did. Now on this trip, what we wanted to do was take that fish water and put it into one of my airlifts, pump it up to nine or 10 feet high so they would then have pressurized water on the farm. Because the girls, these little deaf girls and boys, they were dipping the water up in the tray there in hand carrying it over and ladling it up and pouring it on each loving plant. It's beautiful when you take pictures of people dipping tea leaves in and shaking the water over the plant. But boy, it took them all day to water. So what we did, we set up this aquaponic system. They stocked the tank with tilapia fish. My aquaponic system, what it does is it turns, we do grow some plants in it, but you see the garden around us in the ground is much bigger. What we do is turn this ammonia water into what Natalie? Nitrogen. That's right. Nitrogen. The plants can do nutrient rich. Right. So most ways we go to the overstocked tank, what we do here is every afternoon, they fill the tank all the way full to that top level you see there. They run it all night through the stone. The stones in the bacteria, the nitrifying bacteria, turn the ammonia water into nitrogen. And then in the morning, they take the water and go out. Now here we are giving a hole. There goes your well. With a hole with it. And they're going down, they had to dig me a hole about six feet deep. With a little ladle. Yeah, you see that? That is just a pose. And as they welded on the head of a hoe, they would drop it, turn it a quarter town, fill it full of dirt and pull it up. They did that till they had that thing about five or six feet deep for me. Kind of amazing, you know? Me, I want a pole sole digger or something like that, right? But they, they've dropped it in there and they turned it. Now the funny story is when we got all done and we dropped the pipe in the middle of it. Oh, that's coming out. We knocked off the cap on the bottom and the water came up and around. And we had to take the whole thing out and glue the cap on one little mistake. This is your pipe in a pipe. And these guys laughed about it. Here we were on a Friday afternoon and we were done. They were happy campers. And we dropped this thing in and all said water comes up all over our feet. And we, oh no, we knocked off the cap on the bottom. So here we are standing this thing. Now this thing about 12, 15 feet tall, it's going to go down in the ground and then pump the water out. So you see the air hose there? So it's all together and they drop it in. And this was so remarkable because after this they don't have to carry five gallon buckets of water around anymore. They have hoses and water pots out there with the nutrient fish water in it. So all of this is made out of local materials, right? Yes, it is. Okay, first time we brought American. For the Philippines. Right, we showed them how to do it. And then Danny took us on the shopping trip, Consuelo bought all the material for us and we were able to build it out of their local material and put it in. And that's where the boo-boo happened when we got all done and then when I dropped the pipe in it pushed down on the cap, it came off and the water came up all around our feet. We said, wow, we hit a spring. So we had to take it all apart, do the whole thing all over. Took about an hour or so. And it's amazing that they had a sense of humor about it. They did. You know, you would have thought it would have been fired throughout on the spot. They weren't angry or nothing. They just were happy to do whatever they needed to to get it running because they were excited. Yeah, yeah. And we were supposed to stop off at the equivalent of a Costco or a Walmart-type store in the city and we were supposed to get back to candy and throw to these kids. These kids are 18 years all over, but I guess all over the world, everybody likes chocolate. Well, we didn't do it. We forgot the chocolate. We get there. Oh, wow, the whole reward system's going down too, right? But I was amply paid to go on this trip and that and an American dollars, right, which convert very handsomely in the Philippine money. And so we ran down to an ATM machine and we got a whole lot of $20 bills, right? You should do it. I think their $20 bill was like $2 to us, but we took the $20 bills and we put them up on the paperclips and on the clothesline. Reward. And reward. So everybody went home with money. They were happy campers. I don't remember the chocolate next time, but they kind of like our reward system there. And they got it right. Every time somebody did something good or smart, it was instantaneous reward in that. And in fact, the day after this, after about three days of this thing, four days, we stopped off on the way back after the airport and passed out envelopes to everybody and pretty much gave away our paychecks. That was that. But instead of the break-even working vacation, but the spirit of them was so high and it was so infectious for what they did. Even though we couldn't speak their language. That's right. Or they couldn't understand what we were saying, but sign language teachers was able to teach, tell them what we were talking about. And they had a signer they could keep up with my mouth. You sure was. And then I started making up my own little things, you know, worms and my own little hand sign as to what we were going to do, right? I don't know. You had them really excited then because they started like grunting and making noise and laughing and they were like... Yeah, and it turns out I didn't realize I thought deaf people would just be quiet or mute people, right? But actually they tend to make noises and grunt and they show anger and they show frustration and they also show laughter and fun. Well, I did not realize it, but when I'm working and I get something to go that I make little sounds like hmm, oh, I didn't even realize I did it until these kids started mimicking me on it. And they kind of exaggerated. Yeah, so it turned out I knew the way. So here we are, we're setting up more... They're making more aquaponics. Yeah, they're expanding it. I always didn't notice the smiles on all these people's in the back. They're not posing for these pictures. This is another day in their life for them. But there was that 55 gallon drum is not safe in the Philippines now that aquaponics has come there. We grab them and we re-rig them up. We cut them out, we make aquariums out of them. So we make all kinds of little home systems. So you can see when we took them from the drum up to the concrete tank, that was a step up. The next day we re-plumbed all the 55 gallon drums. There's no way they were getting rid of it. I mean, they did like to grade up. You can see the concrete on the right, plastic on the left. And this is their classroom. They keep in mind the average temperature was about 95 degrees. And I told them next time I come, I'd like to come when it's cool. And they said, well, the Philippines only have two seasons. Hot and hotter, okay? But these people paid attention. They were into it. Now there's the lady in yellow, she's signing for me and that, explaining what I'm doing. But everything we did was hands-on. And you see the blue drum over in the right in the back, that was up on a stand and it would pressurize the water coming over to here. And this is, see how much clear pipe I have. And you can't see it too much here, but that is clear pipe. So the people could see the bubbles. They could see the water. What's going on in those pipes. And we had one little fellow, he was the smallest guy, the whole bunch. And he turned out to be my best student. He followed you everywhere. He would not leave your side. I was a rock star. He's in one of these pictures here. It was the first time I had a groupie, you know? He is fantastic. We really enjoyed him. And you know what? He's still there, Glenn. He's still with them. He's still there, still working with them. And one young man we worked with for, they was a Leonard that worked with them. And he was like a counselor for them, Leonardo. And Leonardo went over, this job was a step up to a big time job for young where he got, he went from the village job to the big job. Doing the same thing, training, working with people and challenge people. And so it was a real stepping stone for him. And that's really neat to affect somebody's life like that, you know? So we say many times we want to teach teachers, right? Not students. So here's that well. Now you see where they crank in it there? Well, you have to crank that thing about 15 times before you get the first drop of water. Then it's steady. Now, notice the natty went over there. She put a 90, put the pipe to the ground and going across so you could walk around. When they first did it, they put it in the air. Well, that would not have lasted very long. But now they go over there, you crank this thing and you start getting that two inch pipe full of water. They fill it up in no time. And they were excited. You see the nursery bed behind us all screened in? I mean, there's a lot of water coming up in this thing, okay? They could really get that thing cranking. And those are called rope pumps, very, very simple. The water was only about 20 feet down. That, I mean, if you open the lid, you could see it down there. And they literally dig a hole in the ground. It fills up with the water and you stick one of those contrasting. So they're doing raised bed gardening here. Now this is called terra aquaponis. And that is another word for it down in Australia. They call it extended aquaponics and that different word for it. And what it means is instead of just growing your food in the aquaponics system, use the aquaponics water to water all the other plants. So they do it seven days a week. So they divide the garden into seven sections and each section gets fish water one day a week. The rest of the time they get to get water, right? But to get the nutritious water and what's the multiplying effect? You see how sparse it is there? Well, when we went back four months later, it was just so full. It was really nice, wasn't it? So they built these screened enclosures in that and this is where they have the worms in there. They learned how to have composting worms then. In fact, as we drove from here, we went over the mountain to St. Carlo. We stopped in three commercial worm farms that started business. And they sell this and equivalent to us and they sell what would be a 50 pound feed sack. They filled it full of worm caps. They sold it for $3 American. But keep in mind, you work all day in the Philippines for $5 a day. A construction worker makes $8 to $10 a day. So having a worm farm where you can sell 20 bags a day for $3 a bag, that worked for everybody. We even went to the dump, right, in St. Carlo. Yes, and they were separating the food waste. They separated the food waste. Because like all over the world, when you go to the dump, they charge you more for the wet garbage than it is just for a dump and dry household stuff, right? And so these two ladies put up a business enterprise, model after the Cuban experience, where they built concrete trays four feet wide, 75 feet long, and they were three feet deep with worms. And they were in business and doing well. That was definitely good all the way around. Yes, they were. I'm making the best fertilizer. So here are these worm pits in there. So you see the fence is to keep the people out and the screen is to keep the birds out. And then go in there, they have the worms. And out here, when they do it, to notice how they're covering up and they're keeping it moist, they really got into doing the bio-intensive gardening, right? And they are sharp. They're not slackers in any way, shape, or form. No, they're not. They latch on to a concept. They take it and run, you know? And they know how to eat. Let me tell you what. They feed us well. We eat well. I did not lose any weight on this trip at all, you know? And that. But everything was tasty. And a lot of them is out of the garden. That's right. Most of it was out of their farm, their chickens. We ate their food. And that was really great. And so here's the fish tank all up and running. They got signs everywhere. So now they got plants all over, growing. Plants are all over. They're planted out. Now look at, see the difference? This is like four months after this. See how much thicker the plants are in the beddings, okay? They get so much more production. And of course, the girls don't have to lug around those five gallon buckets of water, ladling them out all over the place, right? They sure do. So it was a really banana to be there. And we started doing beds low. We did a workshop with them, where we taught them how to fold up the stiff plastic and put down the stakes. And they folded up and they took us out to a chicken farm and two men, they had the chicken farm going, but they had the aquaponics next to it. And they had 10 rows, four feet wide, a hundred feet long with plastic about those six inches high. They filled up with volcanic rock and gravel and they put the bamboo stakes down. And it was great. And so we went into the city of Manila and Danny took me to one of the manufacturers in Consuelo Foundation, funded putting some tanks together, four foot wide, 20 foot long. We could take two of those, the grow beds, roll them up. We could make fish tanks and what they do, they cut this plastic and they heat glue it together, ultrasonic heat. And so they sell it by the square foot. They don't care what shape it is. So I was able, you were there with me. We sat down, we engineered it and we went out to a refugee camp, a relocation camp, and we put in six tanks, 20 feet across and six feet deep. Nice, very good. That was something else, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we're gonna take a little break here, a little message for you. So think Tecawaii, we'll be right back. Is anything. There, Glenn and Natalie from all the Monoguards were back for you. So we're down in the Philippines on this and that's gonna be kind of neat. And we're trying to keep this to show you the farms that we've been to. Actually you helped them, Glenn, you put the aquaponics systems in a community that works to make income for them. Because now they have food that they can offer people to come and eat. Right. They make lunches, they make dinners. It's like the story of Tecawaii Foundation in Manila. They had 240 kids when we met them and they had about 200 kids coming in in the daytime but they couldn't stay. And one of the things is, the way you get kids to come to school, you should feed them. Okay, that's pretty much it. And so that limited the lack of food, limited them. And we watched the population and we went back the next year, they had 880 kids because the food was so great. Same school with the orphanage. Here, this deaf school. If you can feed them, then come. Now what's really neat about this garden is right next to the entrance into their campus. So the public can come there, they can buy there and the kids make money, right? Then they get a share of it. So we've got a couple of little short videos we like to show you here and they'll show you how, in action. In action. Yeah. And on the ground. Yeah, way up on the ground. We get, everybody gets wet in our classes, okay? And you had another little video there? I think so. Is this how they move the water? Yeah, yeah. So it's good fun, and this row crank. Now you've got to be a dedicated person to stand there and do this. But notice he's cranking and cranking and look at the other side. That is a steady stream of water coming out. And he will stand there and crank that thing for an hour and a half to fill that drum up, yeah? Nobody welches out, you know? And they might have somebody come over there and say, it's my turn. You can't do everything by yourself and they'll take over. Don't take over. Yeah, nobody wants to get cheated out of their job. Yeah, that's for sure. And that, but it was really interesting to see them when we pumped the water up on the airlift to a higher elevation, put it in a 55 gallon drum and then they hook, garden hose is it and they were able to go out in the garden and just be able to put the pipe down, water the plant, plant, plant and everything went drastic part. So they were happy with that, great people. Then we've been there, what, three times now? Yeah, yeah, really good. So we're looking forward to going back but Consuelo Foundation here in Hawaii has been extremely generous in sending us over there. Dr. Benny Ron from University of Hawaii, he's over in Israel now. Yes, he is. And sad story, his mother up at about 94 or so, she passed away, you know, and that he'd been taking care of her for the last year, tough job to have. But he's coming back to Austin, Texas and we got our ATOL program, that's our aquaponic training, online learning and good news, it's now a accredited course in University of Alabama, University of Texas, I think. Nebraska. Nebraska, and that's, so that ATOL, if you go up on the internet, you write ATOL, A-T-O-L-L. It's aquaponic training, online learning. It started right here in Hawaii. Yes it did. We used to do a show called Glen and Ben and the Aquazine Show. Okay, there's some YouTube still out there on it. You can see it. And it was kind of cute because where we would go to places like going to the deaf school or that, many times we have a mixed bag. Now at the deaf school, they're all deaf students and deaf teachers, okay? You know, the people, counselors that work with them. But a lot of times when they brought us out to colleges, et cetera, we would have college students, we'd have local farmers and we'd have PhDs in the class, right? And the standing running joke is they would introduce us, we'd all do our little dog and pony show, you know, what we're about in that. And then they would excuse me to go outside on the Lanai, you know, or an area where I could put my pumps together and spray them and make water and that sort of stuff, right? And Dr. Benny would always say, Glenn and Natalie are gonna go outside and they're gonna show you how to build these things, we're gonna turn them on, you'll see them pumping. Now for all of you that wanna know how to build one and wanna go home with one and Consuelo Foundation was extremely generous. Some of these people came from like the Forest Department or the Fishering Department and groups of four or six people, they sent them home with an air compressor and the pump and the hoses. So then when they went back to their bosses, they could walk outside, set it up and show it running. Otherwise, it's just another PowerPoint presentation. It's gone, right? So we do very little PowerPoint, very little, some drawing on a blackboard. But more and more, it's easier just to put it on. It's called hot. Hot, hands-on training. And that's the same thing on the big island. When we came back in, the teachers, it was on Thanksgiving break. We stayed there for the two weeks, we go volunteer. Every morning we came in about nine o'clock in the morning. Well, they'd been there since 7 or 7.30. They had the blackboard full of questions from the day before. Trailed out to what day? Drawn out and I would have to sit there and decipher them and go, wow, we covered all of that? Wow. And they would say, but we have questions. And I was trying to explain it you know, it's not a static system. You've got air building up and then it's going to burst. The valve's going to open. The water's going to come in. The air pressure's going to come in. It's going to close this one. It's going to build up too much. It's going to go over the hip. You're going to pump it up. That will open the valve. In time, I would say, you know what? Let's just build one. And so every morning we built one. By noon time we built one. We went out to lunch. Kind of pat ourselves on the back. Job well done. We left it for the beach. They were excited. We would come back and somebody said, I've got a question. And then I'd be there at dark. Put you back in a training mode. So we go to dinner. We said, well, we're all done. We kind of pat ourselves on the back. Got a very good productive day. And they say, wow, it's only eight o'clock. Home Depot's still open. Loser's still open. Can we go shopping? We would go shopping with them to buy material to put together the next morning. That went on for 10 days before I made my escape. But I'd still be there. It was good fun. And that group is getting ready to go to Nepal. Yes, they are. But I'm getting ready to go somewhere. Where am I going? Yes, you are. Grand will be heading to Montego Bay, Jamaica. Jamaica. Yeah. There's going to be Aquaponic in Jamaica by Marvin. Yep. And he came to our farm. Yeah. This young man got a USDA grant and that funding him because he's building three commercial greenhouses specifically to feed an orphan. And that's a soft spot with Natalie and I, is orphanages, gas schools, any kind of a tough situation. And particularly, we're housing the kids, you have to feed them. So what you have is you have the built-in labor force. You don't have to worry about selling the food. The kids are going to eat the food, right? And then he surplus, it becomes a stipend to them. So it's a win-win situation. So we went down there last year and we went to Jamaica and they've got the greenhouses up and all the material was trickling in. We think we have problems here in Hawaii with shipping. Try Jamaica. That is just a circus and a half, right? I think they have to go to Florida for a thing. Yeah, Florida all over the mainland. And the Jamaican fellow we're working with, he looks Jamaican, he's bigger, he's bigger than me, and a big, beautiful man. But he actually graduated, got his master's in business from Cambridge up in England. So he's English family, you might say, English Jamaican. So there's a big separation there. And there's a stratification there from the local and then the English Jamaican and that they're very well healed. And so he's very educated and well healed what he's doing. And he was in the tourist business, made his money. And when we were there on our last trip with him, we were building the greenhouses, he took us out to visit. And he told me these stories about how he had gone into places that were making local products like growing peppers, a pepper farm, and they made the chili water pepper. And he taught him how to merchandise it, right? And he told me all these self-grad, which is called grandizing stories, how good he did. Well, it turned out he took me for a tour. We went about eight or nine places and all the stories were true. They loved this guy. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And so it was really fantastic. Normally when people are talking about what they've done, you got a little grain of salt there, right? It's something else when you go out in the community and all the doors open up. When we went down to see the mayor, the doors opened up, we greased right in. So it's neat to work for somebody who is so well respected in their community. And he was in the hotel industry. And he made his money in the hotel industry, did good. But he's just kind of burned out on the tourism thing. And it really wasn't making his people better. It's the same situation we have here in Hawaii. The maids and all the people that work in the hotel, those are not the highest paying jobs, right? Being behind the desk or the janitorial services, all necessary for the tourist experience. But it's not a great windfall to it. They're not high-tech jobs, right? Okay? So anyway, we'd like to thank you all so much for coming and joining us here at Think Tech Hawaii. Well, I guess we'll wrap it up here today. And next week, we'll be packing up to head for Jamaica. Yeah.