The Road to San Isidro

With the demise of Tya Berning, who was once synonymous to pili pastries, it is in Manay Nimfa’s tiny store along Bibincahan where you find a line of pili pastry aficionados hoping that by the time they get inside her store there will be some left. Her products are the same as any other pili …

My grandparents had always processed coconuts, the major product from their agricultural properties, into copra. But when Peter Paul established a processing plant in Sorsogon and started buying dehusked whole coconuts we decided to ditch copra and invested into the Peter Paul way of doing business. Copra making is a laborious process. Three coconuts make …

Ritta, a friend I’ve had for ages, has a funny way of expressing love. She shares with me most of her classmates as though I had none of my own. She must think me so destitute of friends – never once considering it could be due to my anti-social tendencies. So, she makes it a …

When I was nine some of my wealthy classmates called their mothers mommy. I wanted to do that too, but quit when even I knew it sounded so ridiculous calling your mother mom when you were chewing dried fish and nothing else for lunch. I was reading this book by Nora Ephron last night (I …

So I’m back after years of hiatus. As much as I want to be consistent, “Uncool”, the name of a column I had for years no longer seems appropriate for a person my age, who wants nothing more but to retire and vanish into the trees and, since it is still the rainy season, the …

My last memory of my cousin Carlota would be serendipitous. The word serendipitous is associated with happiness, and it was a happy occasion to discover by chance that while aboard a bamboo raft on the Buhatan river cruise, the raft sailing beside us would have an old school tape recorder that played, of all things, …

Marla and Jun Rances, friends I inherited from a friend, have been reeling in domestic tourists to our part of the woods, their latest caper of which totaled 15, including themselves. They are active in a Catholic fellowship and members of their group often ask to be invited to Sorsogon, which probably has been making …

Of the many farmhands that ARGO Farms has hired since 2013, Tia has proven to be one of the most reliable and hardworking and she also happens to be the brightest. I’m proud to say this because she is the only woman on the farm, besides myself. If she had more education, I’d bet she’d …

You can feel it’s morning already even when the skies are still completely dark by the increasing frequency of sounds and the quality of silence in between: a little lighter, less compact. A cold breeze blows in from our garden, signaling the Christmas season which always begins with the ‘ber’ months. From the bedroom the …

Another calf was born to ARGO Farms on September 15 via Sutil, who is celebrating her first time as a mother. Sutil happens to be the eldest of Gurangan, our veteran carabao. The calf born to Sutil was named Cholo. So Cholo is Gurangan’s grandcalf. Gurangan has been in our farm for ages. She was …