Farm Log No. 3

There was an I-wanna-give-up-this-dream moment at the point of someone's rejection of my idea but thankfully, perseverance prevailed.  We have yet to see though the whole marathon of thousands of kilometers but I hope to hurdle those frustrating and short-lived instances.  I am buoyed by seeing instructions relayed only through the cellphone bear fruit.  Here they have started the worm composting area.  Seedling trays contain on-your-mark-get-set-go-grow pods of germination. 

 

Soil preparation may be costly if you get a tractor, but wanting to start small I pushed for doing things manually first and consider renting in the future before even considering buying a tractor.  In the farm that he is handling, my husband decided right away on the outright purchase of this equipment but he is probably braver than me in shelling out capital.  On the cautious side, I'd like to start on a humbler scale.  (Probably because I'm also using the last tranche of my savings from China.)

 

I mistakenly thought a backpack type of sprayer would be used for the mango trees.  My husband got one for me from Binondo cheaper than the one sold in the province.  But the tall mango trees need the mechanized type to reach the top so we'd most likely rent that when the organic spray is ready.  The knapsack type we can use for the vegetables on the ground.

 

Carling and Edwin, the two who attended the organic farm training at Costales Farm in Laguna, seems to be excited with the whole venture of learning and experimenting and even if Gary didn't join the three-day course, he seems to be infected with the two's eagerness.  

 

Hearing Anita

Whenever my sister based in South Africa tells me about a book she’s reading, I immediately try to get a hold of it and one of those books is Anita Moorjani’s Dying to Be Me.  Imagine my delight and excitement when I heard that Anita herself was coming to Manila. 

Having read her inspiring story of near death experience and miraculous healing from stage four terminal cancer, I wished I could bring as many people as I could to her talk.  I invited two of my aunts but the one person I so wanted to hear Anita speak was my Mom.  I was too scared that Mom would be too skeptical and too busy to attend.  Ironically, Anita’s talk is all about fearless living.  That still has to sink in deeper for me to practice consistently, relentlessly.

I wanted my friend, R whose father recently passed away to have heard Anita’s message.  After recounting her riveting story in the first half of the talk and explaining the lessons from the other realm in the second half, Anita delivered a sort of postscript assuring us that nobody goes before their time.  Those who cross over wish only our happiness and nothing else.  Our mourning is more for ourselves missing dear ones terribly.

If one listens to Anita’s experience and insights, one goes away thinking there is nothing to worry about, to fret over, to be afraid of, to be sorry for because in essence, we are all love and we are loved unconditionally.  All we have to do is live out our joy and celebrate our unique selves. It’s a rather simple message that has been taught through the ages by various teachers, gurus and enlightened masters but we’ve also contradicted and denied that message by having a society focused on competition rather than collaboration, on giving criticisms rather than encouragement, on achieving rather than being.     

A big shift is needed in the way we’ve designed our educational and governance systems. We should also question how our medical care focuses on diseases rather than wellness.  Anita wishes that people who can influence bringing about changes in these fields would read her book.  Knowing who we really are, knowing about the world without boundaries where we are all headed, knowing what is beyond death, our perspectives and attitudes in this lifetime calls for some re-alignment.

 

 

Unfortunately, there is no video of the entire talk delivered by Anita in Manila but she was featured here on Karen Davila’s show.  Thanks to Arkeology for bringing Anita here and I look forward to her next visit so I can take my Mom.