ARACHIS PINTOI(mani mani)

Everyday I try my best, with my wife, to thank the Lord for all the blessings we receive each day.
But today as I sat in church, visions of the farm come rushing in my mind. I see an endless horizon of greens all over, and I noticed these were Arachis Pintoi covering the soils all over.
The grounds were so green but I noticed there were no weeds and grasses growing, the arachis pintoi have taken over, refusing any ground to the usually aggressive weeds and grasses.

I will begin to plant these more and more, even make a nursery for it.
Malunggays too, i will aggressively plant, and next to it the Ubes. The Malunggays being legumes would fertilize the Ubes, and give climbing trellises to  them too. That sounds logical!  The cassavas too, then, I would plant next to the Malunggays, and the surrounding and covering areas would be covered with teeming arachis pintoi.

So, I will instruct the farmhands, when weeding, to quickly plant the arachis where the grass and weeds have been taken from.

This I will excitedly do. Let's see how it goes.

MISSING THE FARM

I miss the farm.

Where I am now, the computer monitor  lights blind me constantly.  I have to blink repeatedly  to see what I am reading or writing about.
The supposedly expensive seat begins to feel so flat and hard in one's bottom, as I weigh on options choosing words to write. The bamboo slatted seats of the housefarm may be so primitive, but natural seems better really.
Even the cold airconditioner blowing on my face does not provide comfort, it seems to magnify my loss for words to describe how I feel wanting to be in the farm right now. The breeze blowing on one's face in the farm provides for a soothing balm that seems to lift the warm perspiration on the skin. No way the aircon with its mechanical blowers can compete with that.
The wonderful meriendas my wife serves me here may be really delicious and the drinks refreshing, but somehow I begin to long and pine for the  crystalline  juice from a newly harvested, cut-in-the-middle coconut, green and fresh from the tree, and its soft coconut flesh inside white as snow, tasting so suculently sweet.
The windows next to me provides me with cool  winds here, but it is obviously the polluted kind, not the one I cherish at the verdant farm.
I crane my neck to listen if there are chickens roosting and crowing about here, but there are none.
I look out at the windows to see if there are crows circling about ready to dive for and catch the chicks running about at the grounds. No, there are none here where I sit.

I am missing the farm indeed!

ENDLESS DEVELOPMENTS

There does not seem to be stops at the farm. Everything is dynamic, most specially the weeds. Time passes by quickly and in a few days, areas deweeded just recently demand for attention once again. The newly planted crops are flowering, flowering turns into harvestables, and harvestables need to be taken off the plants and marketed. The sun shines and it sets again on the same day, and the following day so it comes around again. Plans have to be made for the next cropping season, for the other areas, while the chickens continue to roost and lay eggs, the pigs gain weights and ready to heat, and the goats become pregnant and heavy with child. There are needs to be fulfilled, from planting more legumes and napiers, to reworking the fields of the last harvest for the next plantings, endless marcotting of calamansis and cropping of the bamboo.

Time is not a luxury here, and one can sense it in the rising and falling of the day's sun. The sunshine is most welcome most after the heavy rains, but the rains too are asked for in prayers after long hot spells of the dry days. One can see the plants begging to be watered, the banana leaves turning from green to yellow and later to deep brown. Yet when the rains come, the banana leaves are so verdant and the pseudo stems full of heavy waters one would think they have drank much too many. Pruning the dead leaves one can be surprised by the sudden burst of water from a fully loaded newly-cut  banana trunk, the pressure built up after prolonged heavy rains of the nights before. It is a wonder how the bananas can bring out their flowers, so heavy and thick, just after the rains in magical splendor. When the skins of the flowers begin to fall and expose the new fingers of the banana fruits in their juvenile forms, my heart skips a beat as I view the majesty of creation unfolding right there before my eyes.

Indeed the farm is a magical place of yore. The napiers are greener as the madre de aguas spread their leaves upwards reaching for the rays of the yellow golden sunshine. The madre cacaos pushes their green buds off the hard cover of the trunks, and the Ipil-ipils magically show off those tiny leaves, one could hardly associate with a hardwood tree such as the Ipil-ipil.

By 4 pm when the sun begins to hide its wonderful glory among the hills around, and the surrounding airs embrace the farmers with the cold winds from the hills, the shadows of trees heralding the onset of dusk, cicadas loudly proclaiming their calls to their mates, it is the time to slow down and prepare for the night. The respite brings to fore another end of the day, and the rest for the day has come.

Magical, entertaining, relaxing and thoroughly special.

do you or tenants do the farming?

A dearest friend in the US reacted with the above question upon reading of our blogs.

Well, i am a weekend farmer, sometimes even remotedly managing. I live for long stretches of time (like two weeks to a month) in Manila before returning to General Santos to tend to the farm. My brother even described me as an "internet farmer", because many of the things I do I learned from the internet through research and browsing.

When I am physically present in the farm, I love to do the chores myself, but I do more of the thinking for them, rather than the laboring part. I have two young men doing the farming labor side for me, plus one good employee who supervises according to my plans and leads the execution of those plans. When I am around, I do the supervision and constant education of my farmers, who are only high school graduates. I got them from far away Cagayan de Oro areas, learning long ago not to hire from local guys who knows the ins and outs of the farms around our area. Familiarity with people around has many negative aspects,including the compromising of security both physical and biological. The less my farmers know of the community the better I am convinced that I will not be losing my goats, pigs, or fruits and vegetables to "friendlies" from the neighborhood. We keep the gates of the farm constantly padlocked and closed, because it has been our experience that whenever we allow locals to enter, something will turn up missing soon enough. If we need help or have to hire for extra labor during some seasons, we always keep our eyes on them until the works are completed.

Our farmers here are on monthly hires, with free one cavan of rice monthly, while the other foods they need they have to produce or source from the farm itself. We provide them with farm housing, so they stay in the farm 7/24. The fish can be taken from the running waters and irrigation passage ways, the mollusc shells abound in there. Fruits and vegetables can be had if they plant or forage around, and these too are plentiful. Chickens, ducks and eggs are now available. We require them to do a FAITH gardening (Food Always in the Home) as taught by the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center of Bansalan Davao del Sur. Seeds and technology I take the cudgels for them.

Lately I have given them free hand to make decisions on improving and developing the farm by themselves, having noticed they would always wait for instructions from me or my supervisor, and that may not be handy all the time considering we are off-premises having to do other works away from the farm. It seems they welcome this new development, and I hope it will invigorate them to work harder, with their own initiatives picking up quickly. I also promised them year end incentives if the production and sales do pick up.

I was told the income rewards on the farm may not be that great, compared to other industries. But the psychic profit and the resulting physical exercises and exposure to the fresh invigorating atmosphere do really provide me with wonders and respite from my otherwise heavily pressured Freight Forwarding daily tasks. I do miss the farm whenever I am in Manila, and it doesn't get any better than this whenever I allow the sunshine to make my day in the farm.

Natural Farming

Attending a Natural Farming seminar opened up a new farming world for me. While I have read many times over the need to switch from chemical and synthetic farm inputs and protect our environment, I did not really understand the implications of what Natural Farming is. That it is the best way to help our farmers and our country to be self sustaining has been hammered to me in my brains for years, but how?

Attending a seminar in Davao last month simply blew me away. The class room teachings of Andry Lim and the practises currently being done in the farm have allowed me to see with a real farmer's eyes on the great and bountiful possibilities facing us. The Pinoy farmer now has a chance to compete out there!

new farm hands

When I was told that it is really difficult to find good farm hands I didnt seriously take that.

Today, I now realize that is very true, specially when there are animals to be taken cared of.

Goats and chickens and ducks died, and all because of incompetence and laziness. Instructions were not followed, and the more serious side: outsiders allowed into the farm contrary to orders and policy.

Today, we have to go back to basic, re-do our security measures and policies, re-plan again with new farmhands.

Inspection

By the time this is over, the rattled farmhands would have their hands full.heheheheheheeheh