My Life Joys

Farming, in my guess, is probably one of the oldest profession there is. Aside from fishing and hunting, cultivating the land was the way to produce food, hence, answers one of the basic need of mankind.

Commune With Nature

Farming has been the profession of my grandfather whom we call Mamay – local dialect of Lolo or Gramps- and those before him. I have memories of my childhood riding the paragos (cart) pulled by a cow (which lived beside their house). My Mamay doesn’t know how to drive a motor vehicle but he sure was a great with the paragos. My siblings and cousins were in awe when he would know how to make the cow stop or turn wherever he wanted it to go by just saying a word or so. That even if we imitated him, we couldn’t get the cow to follow our bidding. These vacations in our native town taught me some lessons in life that were beyond the teachings of an exclusive Catholic school in the city.

The picture of early mornings when we harvest tomatoes or sitaw (stringbeans) are still vivid in my memory. The feel of the damp air during dawn as we go to the farm. As we move on, there was the smell of kapeng barako (Batangas coffee variety) and sinaing na isda (fish cooked in sour broth usually from dried camias) from Nanay’s basket. Holding a brown bag full of freshly baked pan de sal, was a blessing instead of a chore because of the warmth it provided in contrast to the cold morning air.

Mamay would “park” the paragos somewhere near a tree and I will be left there to sleep… so this is where a dream that was abruptly cut will be continued. When I opened my eyes, it seemed that the sky hasn’t decided if it really wants to wake up or not, there was the tinge of dark blue at the outer edge turning lighter shade of blue as against the shining orangy to yellowish rays of the sky as if the sun was saying, “Here I am,  rise up everyone, it’s a new day!” Okay so the colors were inverted. I was staring up the wrong way

Usually the only utensils were “serving spoons.” These were large spoons issued by the Armed Forces that my father and uncles brought home from their training. Actually, I still see some of those spoons in my gran’s even up to now. Therefore, we eat using our bare hands. Mamay would sometimes get banana leaves as our table and plate in one… yeah he just out down the banana leaf the food in the middle and we just put in the food in our side of the leaf. Those were the days. Such good days.

Mamay and Nanay retired from farming years ago. We don’t have a cow, even a paragos. Most people my father’s age went to school and took different paths but not much went to farming.

I’m trying my hand into farming. With a lot of new technologies and schools of thought- traditional, best practices, to methods, and preferences – there are a lot to learn. Mamay’s way was the hard way in which many techniques had been improved based on agricultural milestones. His way, for example, was day and night burning of weeds to create smoke that will induce flowers in mango. Now, there are flower inducers available to do this.

Suffice to say that as a start, I had tried some toiling using manual tools for my mini-start up project. This, I could have just instructed and watched my farm hand, Jumong. Knowing how difficult the work are, will help build the appreciation for the fruits of such hard labor. My hands were burned from using weeder knife and soil tille sans the gloves. Yes, this is the manual tiller (locally called “pang-asada“) with a wooden body with a metal head that looked like number 7. Experience would tell me that after two uses, a regular 15-peso knitted glove from Ace Hardware will be good as for disposal. That the “pantaktak” works well when Jumong used it to dig soil but seemed that the ground just bounce it back to me when I used it. This built me a budding and enhanced virtue of patience to wait when I’m so tired and want to finish everything because of tiredness because personally, I know it’s just so heavy and very challenging.

Soil and Toil

Two-week-old transplanted Papaya

Of course these things I try to experience as a newbie farmer. I wouldn’t want to do everything manually when science had already improved the way we farm. This is really more of character building. Besides it also helps me exercise. The gym machines are teeny weeny compared to the activities of farming. Soon enough, maybe the character and body building stuff will be a solid foundation that it will be high time to use the benefits of modern technology. No one forced me to do it the hard way though so there is no one to blame for all the muscle aches I’m having right now but myself hehehe.

In this new journey, I hope the farming stories to come here in My Life Joys will inspire and help you in as much as the real experience affects my life joys.

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