Thursday, January 28, 2010

January 3, 2009 - Advantages

Jan 03, 2009 Life on the farm has lots of advantages. In comparison to that little town I used to live, rural life is marked by nature in spite of all city comfort we may have: electricity, TV with satellite cable, cell phones, appliances, and even other types of equipment for our comfort. Inside the house, nothing differs from another house in town. Until muddy dogs and wet cats enter from any open door. I was awakened early morning by a cat who came through a half-open window. As I opened the door to kick it out, four others came in. Soon the dogs also wanted to have their food. I gave up sleeping, fed the dogs, and fixed myself some weak coffee to be drunk in small cups, but many times. Drinking fresh water out of a deep well; eating freshly fished tilapia few hours from getting them out of a pond nearby; smelling the sweet tropical scent of ripe fruit of an ugly white flower; walking through the coffee plantation; hearing my daughter saying “I love to walk through here”; picking avocados from the ground and saving them to make soap; running around to bring the little chicks out for the day, and taking them away at night and feeding them with a variety of grains, proteins, greens; keeping my eyes open over the dogs and cats ready to chase and chew my birdies; grilling steak almost every dinner using logs that lay around; eating enormous yet buttery mangoes; checking out of a bunch of unriped bananas by the chicken batteries; going to the tenants’ house to ask for durian, a creamy delicacy but considered a hillbillies’s choice of fruit; silence at night being broken only by dogs barks somewhere far—no more cars squeaking the tires under my window, neither drunkards yelling on the street; clothes hanging on a long line to be dried by the sun and wind; carrying a bucket full of wild cucumber for dinner; wondering when I can cut a young bamboo shoot; remembering to water all new plants we planted to revitalize the landscape; planning to pick up the sugar cane mill fallen on the ground after the wood base got rotten. Farm life is getting the hands and nails dirty, heels cracked, suntan only until the t-shirt allows, eating anything that I feel like, it’s observing the nature taking its course. It’s seeing the rain falling on a thirsty land; it’s seeing the grateful plants that welcome with blossoms.

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