Love your roots, preserve the future

By Al S. Mendoza

YOU are a farm boy, you will be for life.

I’m not kidding.

Look at me. I am not exactly a farm boy.  But all this time, I’ve been trying my best to become one.

I grew up in the poblacion, but many of my playmates back then were from the farm.

As a kid, I copied my classmates from the barrios by also bringing my lunch of boiled egg and fried  hito wrapped in banana leaves.

We would frolic under the tamarind tree by the gurgling brook, feasting on our lunch with our bare hands.  A red tomato was as indispensable as a gun to an assassin.

Each meal was an occasion. Big time.

After college, I retraced our bonds. Even into a married life, been mingling with true-blue farm buggers-both boyhood chums and new-found jerks.

A breeze-buffeted nipa hut built by writer Sol Juvida in the deepest recesses of a barrio in Mangatarem is now my refuge to escape the drudgery of city life.

Ah just luv it.

Isn’t it said that for one’s existence to be complete in this imperfect, but still beautiful world, one must write a book, have a child and plant a tree.

By God’s grace, I’ve done all three.

Not just one but many trees I planted.

My trees now bear fruits and harvesting them has become my latest hobby.

Some weeks back, I had the joy of my life picking kalabaw mangoes, both in the barrio and in my own little farm in the big city.

“That’s what I want to do, too,” said fellow columnist Alex Magno of Star during the wake of his late, lamented wife, Susan.

Last weekend, I shared with some friends some santol fruits that were freshly picked from my backyard. The sweetest in the world, ah tell ya!

Days ago, my dwarf atis netted a bundle.

In a little while, my avocados are ready for harvesting in bulk.

Know what?

I just had one piece of avocado, direct from my backyard, for breakfast.

That was on Thursday, July 9, the birthday of writer Sol Juvida’s second child.

I poured a teaspoon of pure honey into it. Umm! Delicious!

You should also try it.

Do you know that pure honey has no shelf life?

It is forever, as perennial as grass.

The farm boys in my youth, they’ve all been successful in the big city-mostly, that is.

But still, when the barrio breeze beckons, like me, they scamper back to their roots like roosters roused suddenly from sleep.

Just a few days ago, I bumped into guys eternally faithful to the soil: very likable agriculturist Butz Ferrer and DILG hotshot King Cornel. OK, OK, include Anel Perez, the great environmentalist and lover of Mother Nature. And Sam Rosario, too, the affable mayor of Binmaley.

We all shared one thing in common: Our love for the wealth of land, valleys, hills, streams, brooks, rivers.

The shared laughter will never be forgotten.  But the passion we shared for everything organic, the preservation of precious earth, the eradication of chemical-laden food enhancers-they form the niche of bonding.

Here’s to a clean future-the best ever that we could bequeath our children.

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