The
Farmers Life
Mrs. Gemma Kalinggan is one of the
farmers in Taloy Sur, Tuba, Benguet. She is already 39 years old and she is
married to Mr. Kalinggan and they have two children. Mrs. Gemma Kalinggan is the secretary of
Taloy Sur Irrigation Association, an association wherein most of the members
are farmers. She is active in seminars that are being conducted for the benefit
of farmers.
From the age of seven, she already
knows how to work at the garden because his parents are also farmers. At
present, she is a full time farmer. According to her, farming is not an easy
job because you need to do heavy work like pulling weeds, cultivate the soil
and many more. But even though it is hard it is still enjoyable especially if
you are a nature lover. She include that in farming you need determination and
passion because if you don’t have these two things in your mentality, probably
all of your plants will surely die. In farming the word discouragement must be
disregarded, even though the price of the plants are low, you must always give
another try, don’t be easily discouraged with the situation. You should always develop a positive mind
set.
According to her, a typical day for a
farmer is waking up early in the morning, you must be already in your farm
before the sunrise. At that time you should water your plants for them to grow
and check if there are problems. When the weather is sunny or rainy you must
not work because your health is also important, that’s what she said. In
farming, problems are also inevitable, sometimes you cannot start gardening if
you don’t have a capital. Another problem is the natural disaster like typhoons
and the price of the plants are unstable, sometimes you are being bankrupt. For
her the joy of farming is when you see your plants grow and when you share some
of your gathered vegetables on your neighborhood. Another thing that makes a
farmer happy is when the price of the vegetables is high in local term it is
called “chamba”.
She said that you must treat your plants
like they are your children you must take care of them properly for them to
grow. Every time you go the farm you must also talk to them, for her talking to
plants are good because it is like a stress reliever. If you don’t exert extra
effort probably your plants will grow but they cannot produce well. She told me
that farming is one of the most important job because without farmers probably
all people will die because of hunger. That’s why she doesn’t want to see
people that are underestimating farming. You must always be proud that you are
a farmer because you are the one who produce foods of every table in the world.
MRS. Gemma Kalinggan with her husband in their farm at Baw-ek, Taloy Sur, Tuba, Benguet
