Funeral Plans, Pigs, Chickens, Goats, Fruit Trees, Houses, etc...

If you do not mind me asking, what do you pay for the St. Peter's Funeral Plan? A while back my Wife and I tried to work out the monthly rate but went in circles with what seemed to be an expensive way of doing things compared to saving to pay outright.

We managed to speak a little about things last night and I told her I do not want to end up in a coffin in the house for a week with a Chicken eating rice over my face. I would prefer to be either cremated or buried PRONTO without a Church Service so try and do all in-house at the Funeral Home.

Building a house is a good idea I feel, but I do not want to overdo it, if my Wife went back to her old job at the Bakery at 100/150php per day, and the Electricity came to 5,000 pesos per month, then it would be unviable for her to live in and attempt to run such a house, so I am hoping to build something that uses less electricity and is easy to maintain.

Quiet a few of the relatives here raise Pigs, and they make good money from it (at a Filipino level) so we will also be looking at that along with some Goats etc. We have a 4M x 8M Bamboo Chicken Coop and are slowly breeding up, starting from just a few Chickens we now have 30+ and growing. The plan is to end up with meat for us (to save buying at a higher price at the Market) and fresh Eggs where we end up with enough where we can look at selling to locals. Native Chickens fetch a higher price per kilo (and are tastier IMHO) so she is mainly focusing on those which also do not suffer as many illnesses as other breeds. I would also like if she can harvest some of the Pigs and freeze the meat to sell correctly packaged in clip-seal packets along with the better cuts of the Chicken. If she can sell the better cuts of meat for income and eat the less appealing cuts of meat then she can sustain herself and our Daughter. The other idea is to sell the Piglets as soon as they are weaned to avoid expensive Feeds to fatten them up.

We are also planting Fruit Trees, I am trying to raise Lemon and Avocado Trees as the fruit sells well at higher prices, along with local Fruit Trees like Jack Fruit, Apple Mango, Lime, Marang, Custard Apple, Santol, Papaya, Coconut etc and want to also try Passionfruit, Mulberries as something different which will hopefully sell okay locally. We also have a large Sambag Tree which the fruit is used for Sinigang. Apparently you can use that in sweet & sour dishes along with sweets so I hope to further investigate this Tree. I am hoping she will be able to step it up to cooking up dishes using some of our own Fruits and selling to local Eateries or Restaurants.

Once we are living on the Lot I want to try and have above ground gardens beds built using Hollow Block where we can fill with compost and grow vegetables. Papa currently grows vegetables on our Lot while we are not living there and it helps to fund their lives and provides us with fresh vegetables when they are in season. I would also like to have a few small Fish Ponds built as local people are able to acquire free fingerlings if they have their own Fish Ponds so I am hoping that will also go towards helping my Wife and Daughter to become more self sustainable in the future. Now all I have to do is live long enough to see this through!

 

Actually I cannot tell you how much these Funeral plans cost, the reason for that is; my wife worked in a St Peters office and bought them before we met they are not named policy's and can be used for anyone in the family.
At the moment I rent a 3bed hollow block house and my electric bill is around half of what you suggest with one AC running 12 to 16hrs a day, if/when I do build a house it will be modest with small rooms that can be cooled by small AC units and also have a free flow of air passing through them, there is no good reason not to build a very small house for your dependants if you have the land and to consider only the use of a few LED lights a Fridge, Fan and TV, probably P500 a month would cover the cost of electric for these?
Pigs? I hear they are not a good investment on a small scale, unless you have a cheap food source to feed them on? stale bread from a bakery or the waste from a Restaurant, Goats need at least an acre to feed on to sustain 5 or 6 of them, plus there is a need to supplement their diet with some grains to have a better chance of them producing twins, it is also better to get a Boer Goat male (they cost around P30K for an adult and they weight 60kgms) to service some local native ones at least two unrelated females, pay over the odds if you can find one that has triplets or get the offspring from it? the first females bred from them are then put back to the father, the Grandchildren are then paired to each other but only half brother and sister, in time you will breed a faster growing heavier animal, but still sustain the vigour of the native Goats.
On a limited budget I'm sure Chickens are the better prospect for you, a native chicken fed in the same way as a commercial produced bird would just taste much the same, again just like the Goat breeding get a cockerel of a breed like Kabir and breed that into the flock, you will get a faster growing heavier chicken and still keep the disease resistance of the native bird. To improve any animal breed you must be very selective and only keep the best to breed from, examples of that would be the hen that lays the most eggs and the birds that grow to a killing weight in the shortest time.

 

The Nipa Roof helps a lot with cooling compared to the lower iron roof covering our Kitchen extension, so a lot of thought will go into cooling options using natural air flow in the new house. We have a 48" Flat-screen TV with a Pay-TV Box and a Server Power Supply, 1x Computer with a UPS and a Modem, all of which are switched off and unplugged when not in use. We also have 3x Cell Phones which are on charge overnight, a Pedestal Fan which is on the go for most of the day and night and a small cheap plastic ceiling fan the Daughter uses overnight. We also have a small Fridge and separate small Freezer which are on 24/7 and we have 4x LED lights, 2 of which are left on overnight outside. We have no Air-con or Water Heater and our Monthly Bill is around the 2,000 pesos mark, sometimes a little more, often a little less.

The Wife has a Kabir Rooster and he is a BIG hooha along with two other hybrid Roosters which she alternates each week in an attempt to breeding larger Hens. Any future Roosters will be destined for the Freezer, until the trio outlive their usefulness, whereby they will also be seeing the inside of a Freezer!

Family and friends here Breed Piglets and often score around 12 to 17 in a batch, which surprised me! So far; I have watched them use the money for College fees, buying Bikes, a couple of them even building Filipino style Block & Iron houses, doing it one step at a time between Breeding cycles. I know by Western standards it will not be financially viable/profitable enough to satisfy myself, but I hope it will be enough to sustain the Wife and Daughter in the future. Looking around here, most locals have 1 to 3 pigs in their backyards and do it (breeding) repeatedly. Papa tried buying Piglets and fattening them up, but stopped doing it as he said you basically only get the money back that you have invested in Feed. The neighbours here and a couple of Uncles Breed their Piglets instead of buying them. They feed the Sows a lot of organic feed, then sell the Piglets as soon as they are weaned letting someone else invest in Feed to fatten them up to Lechon size. They have HUGE Sows which produce good litters and have been doing it the past 5 years I have been watching them. (I think it is wiser to watch the locals and copy what they do instead of watching the foreigners and copying their habit of doing their dough...)

Goats; I cannot see much of a financial future in them myself compared to how many Piglets you will get in one batch and be able to sell off. The Wife just bought 3 Goats (2 Females - the Mother who has had 4 births, and a Daughter who has just finished weaning the one male kid Goat, her first birth) She may have just sold the male kid Goat for half what she paid for all three, so she can buy another Male Goat to eventually put over the 2 Nanny Goats. Interesting what you have stated as I thought inbreeding would result in smaller sickly Goats. Should she keep the young male kid to put back over the Mother and Grandmother instead of buying another Male Goat?

 

Only breed from females that are prone to having two kids every time, as I said it is better to find a male that has at least some Boer blood in it and it should be of a larger size, inbreeding sets the qualities of the sire in this case, of course the practise cannot be carried on forever, most Race Horses of good standing will feature a good winner in their pedigree and the same horse should appear at least twice on both sides, after inbreeding then line breeding is the game, Aunt to nephew that sort of thing but by then you should have at least 75% of the sire within the flock, although some aim for 87.5% in each and everyone, if you can breed good Boer crosses there will always be a market for them for breeding purposes, although they are big for Goats have horns they are mostly docile, check out a picture of one and you will see they also look good.

 

My late husband had the St. Peter's plan. I honestly cannot tell you how much it was, seems it was pretty pricey. (I could try to go find receipts, if I kept them.) The lady rep we dealt with every month came to the hospital the day we turned off life support, asking for the remaining balance in full (it was still a large amount), before they would take his body to the chapel. I thought that was a very cruel way for them to handle it, especially with the enormous hospital bill (that the hospital wanted paid right away, too). I went to the hospital finance office and made payment arrangements with them (after a large down payment). Anyway, thank goodness for wonderful friends and family here and there that got my daughter and myself through all of it. It all worked out. Life insurance money finally came and we were able to pay the hospital bill and and we were able to pay back the family there that fronted the money for the cemetery plot (another thing that isn't cheap).

 

I have no real knowledge of building here but I have often thought IF it is feasible (and it may already happen) to have a roof constructed so that there is an escape vent at the top to let out hot air. Obviously the vent would be covered a short distance above to stop rain entering (a cowl).

I am assuming the air inside gets hotter than the outside air and so would naturally rise as cooler air replaces it - it may, in fact, be assisted by a fan in the room (perhaps pointed a bit upwards).

I am not sure how much the cost of lighting would be an issue to you but I saw a bottle light once where a bottle is inserted in the roof and (I think) filled with water and that transmitted light from outside (not much use in the night obviously!) and have also seen light tubes where natural external light is reflected down a tube into a room.

Also, is there any mileage in using wind-power (it never seems that windy here though) or diverting a stream (possibly with damming) to make a simple water-powered turbine?

 

A sad tale and I could only think to give you a 'thanks' for writing it as no other more suitable icon exists.

It is something we all have to think about and try to ensure those we leave behind are faced with as few as possible of the issues you stated above.

Money and health/death are poor bedfellows but that is the reality of life, especially for people in developing nations. Every time I see people here following a coffin, especially when on foot and in the heat, I feel so very sorry for them and want to help but I know the problem is just too great.

Thanks for your contribution and best wishes to you.

 

Hmmm .... never know when you are joking but: I did stay on topic. It was a reply to Brian's thoughts on finding housing his wife and daughter could sustain when he is not with them.