Cambridge as an Actual Farm!

In 1990 Ellie moved back to General Santos City from England, I was still employed in Africa at the time so I could only join her during my break periods! Once she had renovated the existing dilapidated house into a livable domicile she moved onto the land so that she could be on top of the construction all the time!

Some of the local people asked her if she would like to continue with the Rice Farm and if so they would assist her, for a price of course so she agreed as the land was doing nothing anyway so she decided to try to make a little extra cash from it! The local Farmers moved in with their Carabao Powered Equipment and started plowing the land, removing the weeds, constructing the Dyke’s, flooding the rice fields and plowing and leveling until they were satisfied that all was good and once they were happy they sewed the rice seed into the prepared fields! It did not take very long for the new rice shoots to break the surface of the water and when they did the color of green was really fantastic, it was a new life green and very satisfying to see!

As the Rice grew there were other thing to do as fertilizer had to be applied to the plants to make them grow healthy and commercial pesticide were added in order to stop the insects from eating the shoots! Weeds were also a problem as they would strangle the plants if they were not removed so periodically we would hire the traveling gang of female weeders who were very hard working and skillful at what they did! They also captured plenty of Rice Frogs as they worked and they would cook them up for their snacks! These Rice Frogs were only small but very delicious!

The only real problem that we had with growing rice came from a very mean Farmer who lived near by, his nick name was Saddam and it was a very suitable name for him! He would cut off our irrigation water and divert it to his own rice fields even if they were over flowing, he had no consideration for anybody else and was not very popular with anyone in the community! His action was a pain in the butt really but we would just keep on sending one man to stand by the irrigation to make sure that he did not dry us out!

Once the rice was fully grown, the irrigation water was stopped and the fields allowed to dry out, this was the cause of the next problem which was totally natural! As the rice dried, swarms of small sparrows arrived in order to get their share of the harvest but this was a problem I was expecting as even back in England I made ready for a bit of farming and purchased a state of the art electronic machine which was guaranteed to keep birds away for an area of 10 Hectares and more but unfortunately no body told the local birds about this, it did not work on them at all so really it was a complete waste of money so we reverted to the local time tested method of getting a gang of kids with tin cans on a strings to scare the birds away! Strangely enough, the stupid bird eliminating machine worked very well on swarms of grasshopper! They never mentioned that in the handbook!

When the rice was dry and ready to harvest it was all hands on deck to get the harvest in before the birds got too much but once it was all in along came a man with the machine towed by his carabao which separated the rice from the stalks! For this service it was a share deal, for every so many cans of Rice or Palai as it is called his share would be one can of rice! I cannot remember the share but it was OK! Once the machine guy and the harvesters each got their share we took our rice to a nearby mill to have the hulls removed and the rice polished, once again the payment for this was a share and at last we could actually see our total share of the harvest which was good for us as we did not have to buy rice for quite some time!

After a couple of harvests of rice we were advised to grow Corn or Maize as its locally known by so once again, in came the Carabao guys to plow the fields, remove any weeds and get the land ready to plant! The planting was done by everyone in order to make it quick so even children followed the men who made holes with sticks for the seeds to be dropped into then the soil was pushed back into the hole with a workers foot to cover the seeds! As the Maize sprouted and was growing, Fertilizer and Pesticides were applied as required and plowing was done in between the rows by Carabao Plow without destroying a single plant! Growing maize was much easier than Rice as it was much less labor intensive and also the water requirements for Maize was much less than Rice!

When it came to harvesting the Maize there was a group of people who specialized in this work and would clear the whole field on a share basis as usual so we did not really have much to do with the harvest except to keep an eye on the people doing the harvest! Once all the heads were gathered in, all the outer leaves were stripped off by hand and the heads and seeds were dried out in the sun! Once dry, the machine guy once again appeared and removed the seeds from the head and again got paid by share! One thing with a Maize Harvest was the fact that you could see your harvest immediately unlike Rice where there was still another step to finishing the final product! Some of the harvest we kept for animal feeds and some for our own use while the rest we sold in the market! The stalks were cut down and taken away by by people to feed their livestock then Cattle and Carabau were put into the fields to clear the stubble a bit more and also do a bit of organic fertilization for free!

The problem in a way for growing both Rice and Maize was that we had to pay people to do every step of the work which reduced our profit quite considerably, also our land was a bit small having only about 1.5 hectares to farm where 4 hectares would have been much better! For a local farming family who does all the work themselves the profits are larger but usually after they have paid off their credit to everyone they are really no better of than we managed!

As this was going on, Ellie was playing with the seeds which we had shipped out in our container from England but this was not too successful! The Tulips and Daffodils we brought out were planted but without a bit of cold weather to activate them they never woke up! The other flowers grew but were not at all like they should have been! Short border type flowers grew about 3 feet high and had tiny flowers and the taller flowers grew normally but again with tiny flowers! Even Roses produced only small flowers! The vegetables fared no better as the local insects had a field day with them so we gave up on the imported seeds and tried the local varieties which grew no problem but unfortunately when ours were ripe for the picking so was the harvest of everyone else in the area so the bottom fell out of the market and there was no profit to be made!

One thing that did grow easily was Aubergine or Egg Plant! Ellie grew a lot of this to feed the workers so we all had Egg Plant fried in egg with breakfast, also for lunch and dinner was an Egg Plant recipe, even at break times many times we had an Egg Plant something or other! After a while of the Egg Plant diet something mysterious happened and many of the mother plants died off, I am sure that the workers contributed to this problem somewhere along the line!

Also on our farm we had a mixture of Animals and Birds: Cows, Carabao, Pigs, Goats, Sheep, Rabbits, Turkeys, Geese, Ducks, Chickens, Fighting Cocks, Bantams plus Dogs and Cats, even a pet Crow! These were mostly to make it look more like a working farm and were not really for profit but many of them made very good eating! Unfortunately, once the Hotel business got going we had to remove most of our livestock as the guests did not appreciate being woken up by the squealing of hungry Pigs or the Fighting Cocks going off at any time of day or night! The Geese used to chase people around the car park and Toto the Billy Goat found great amusement by sneaking up behind people and butting them from behind! I will tell you more about the Cambridge Livestock but that’s another story!

Now we do not attempt any form of farming now as the area was officially changed from Agricultural to Residential and the land we have is now pretty well covered with things like the Hotel, Dive Shop, Pool, Cottages, Car Park while all other areas are covered with Plants and Trees! We do get good Seasonal Fruits as we do have trees and plants which give edible foods like: Mango, Avocado, Jack-Fruit, Papaya, Star Apple, Calabash, Noni, Cami-as both sweet and sour, Malungai, Banana’s, Giobano, Coconuts, Chico, Cashew, Breadfruit, Chillies and of course Aubergine! Please excuse my local spelling of some of these fruits if it is not correct!

All in all we had a good time playing at being farmers but when you have to pay for every aspect then the profits which could be made are cut back considerably but it was fun doing it! I will recommend anyone to try to do a bit of Farming if you have a bit of spare cash but if you have to employ people to do all the work for you then do not expect to make a fortune at it but rest assured, you will have fun!