Farming

Farming, what do i know about farming? buggar all really to be honest, not one of my subjects and here in the Philippines, what do i know? even less than buggar all..... less honestly.

Nevertheless when Raul my neighbour asked me if i liked to visit his farms with him this morning, seemed like a good opportunity to spend some time with Raul and his wife Emily and enjoy some expert introduction.

His farm lands are (about 40 hectares in total spread over about 5 locations) on the slopes of Mount Apo and so, this was mainly fruit but also flowers and vegetable farming we were talking about, as opposed say to rice fields or fish farms etc.

The place itself is like paradise, fertile, plenty of rain and a very desirable place indeed to live.....but...farming is tough here, prices are low for produce, weather and pests can make crops variable and basically there isn't much money in it.

However i met some friendly and well cared for people, i was made welcome everywhere and even learnt a little along the way.

The land belongs to Raul and his family business, but farming tenants occupy the land and pay rent to Raul in various ways, like......

Sharing the crop bounty with the landlord, for example if a crop sells for a sum, Raul as the landlord gets a percentage share, or....

paying monthly lease and a lesser percentage as above, or...

Any variation on the above.

As Raul said to me, the tenant farmers have a marginal existence, but their children are beautiful and well cared for, their homes are basic and clean and they have dignity and pride in their work AND (and this is a big AND) they live in paradise.

I ate (plenty but also including) 6 different kinds of fruit which were picked straight from the tree, stomach was spot on and all the fruits were delicious, won't bore you with the names but they are all exotic tastey and fresh with a big F.

Raul was a gracious host to me and more importantly welcomed with great hospitality by his tenants, he is obviously very popular...he brought food and gifts to his tenants, we received, courtesy, smiles and Filipino hospitality everywhere we went. For example, one and only one example of his kindness is / was to stop off on the way at the local market to buy food for the day for the whole farm community, we dropped the food off, said "hi" went on a tour of the form (ate fruit)...came back 2 hours later to delicious food, cooked for us of course...

Raul was keen i try Tuba which is a distilled coconut spirit. The 1 day Tuba is like fruit juice, the 3 day old, like rocket fuel, the 4 or 5 day, like vinegar, we tried all 3 stages....what can you say, costs about 50 pence (uk pence) per gallon, drink it when you want.....juice or vinegar.

We stopped at his final small holding and we picked a crop each of egg plant, brought that back for breakfast tomorrow with egg, delicious. Egg plant is aubergine to us.

Some random photos of the day out are shown, it was a great day for me, for Raul it was work with his friend (me) tagging along.