Wednesday, October 7, 2015

2 - "What you see depends on how you view the world. To MOST PEOPLE, this is just DIRT. To A FARMER, it's POTENTIAL." - Doe Zantamata



     My dad always tells us that once you have a farm, you could already live a simple life. Why did he say so? Most of the simple needs of people are come from the farm. The rice, vegetables and the food for the cows and carabaos to make them healthy and reproduce more of their own kind.

     Every other week my dad always goes to Pangasinan, which is my dad's hometown, and it makes my mom angry 'cause dad is not with us every weekends. Unfortunately, a relative died and we all went to a super short vacation. My grandma's place is not that civilized yet. Signals are low and roads are not cemented which made the place looks urbanized, well it really is. After we spent the night in my grandpa's wake (my grandma's older brother) we rest for a while and prepare to go home. Then my father said why don't we visit our farm so that we, mom, me & Allyn, can see it. 
( Those mountains are not ours)

     My dad wants us to see our not that spacious piece of land and start to learn how to manage it. We grew in Manila, unlike my parent, that’s why we don't have any knowledge about crops and stuffs about farms. I can't even identify the difference between a palay and a corn crop. Before going home, we went first to our land. My dad plant Mahoganies already to serve as a border. Mahoganies grow slow, it takes about five years before we could make use of it and the return is good. There are lots of squash there and for me it's so fun because its my first time to harvest a vegetable. Well during our JFTX (Joint Field Training Exercise) when I was a cadet (OUCHHH!), we spend almost two weeks in the mountains for us to apply all the tactical lessons that we learned. Yes, we are so close to the nature but the food is not earned hard because we have supplies and we even have a portable gas stove which makes our life there some-how easier than the real thing that each of the soldiers experience.

     So back to the story, my dad explained to us his plans in that piece of land, and of course I am the first born I had to listen and grasp all his plans so that when the time comes that I will be the one who will manage it, I can do all my dad's plans and even better ( I wanted to build a pool there, HAHA!). 

     We are not rich, honestly speaking. My sister and I are just lucky that we have parents like them that use the money for long term purposes. They just want to be sure that when the time comes that they are not with us anymore we will not experience the hardship they've been through.

Land doesn't have any accumulated depreciation, actually most of the time it appreciates. As the time goes by and I know that place will be civilize soon, maybe that small piece of land will be five times more than its worth now. But no matter what happen, even worse comes to worst we will not sell it. Because that piece of land symbolizes our parents’ long service in AFP, their sacrifices, hard work and efforts. It is the fruit of their labor.







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