Somebody once asked me what it is that gives joy and meaning to a farmer’s life.
The greatest joy of a farmer, I said, is the thought that he is involved in an endless drama of life and creation.
When the farmer sees chicks breaking out of the yolk after 21 days, when the Lanzones he planted five years earlier starts to flower, when the goat does give birth to twins and when the Mahogany trees planted 24 years earlier are large enough to be harvested to build a farm house, the farmer feels immeasurable fulfilment and joy.
Indeed, what other work in this world makes you the master to decide what color should chickens have and which fruit trees should be allowed to bear fruit and which should be cut down because it bears sour fruit?
It is farming, no other.
The farmer is the master artist who paints a beautiful artwork of life everyday with his farm as his canvas.
Yesterday, before leaving the farm to go back to work on Monday, I discovered that one of the Abaca suckers I planted exactly one year ago has started to bear fruit.
I felt a surge of joy realising the meaning of the fruiting of the Abaca I planted last year.
You see, there are three ways of propagating Abaca, scientifically known as Musa Textiles and considered as the strongest natural fibre in the world.
First is the natural way of planting it which is to take the young suckers from the mother plants. The problem with this planting method is that you could only get at most four suckers per hill and this effectively slows down a massive Abaca planting program.
The second is through Tissue Culture which involves splitting the corm and placing these in test tubes where they grow into merriplants which are then transferred to plastic bags until they are large enough to be planted in the field.
Producing plantlets through Tissue Culture, however, is a tedious and expensive process. It also requires a lot of time before the merriplants become large enough to be planted in the field.
The third method is by harvesting the seeds from the Abaca fruits and many experts believe that this is the fastest way to propagate plantlets.
Just imagine how many seeds are there in one finger, how many fingers are there in one hand and how many hands would there be in one bunch. The numbers are staggering.
Before I left, I instructed my farm hands to make sure that the first Abaca fruit will be “isolated” by wrapping it with a treated plastic bag used by Cavendish and Lacatan banana farmers.
This would ensure that there would be no possibility of cross-pollination and that the seeds that would be harvested would be “pure” Abaca.
I have about 5,000 Abaca hills in my farm and one can just imagine how many plantlets I will be able to produce from the suckers I planted just last year.
This is the joy of farming – the thought of being able to start something as gigantic as planting thousands of hectares of Abaca by just ensuring that one bunch of fruits is “protected” and “purified.”
This is why I love farming. It makes me an artist of living things.
(Photos show my fruiting Abaca and the suckers which I planted September of last year.)
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