The Secret Wish Of A Farmer’s Daughter

Idyllic. Bucolic. Romantic. Cliché adjectives come to mind whenever I drive along a road that bisects, say, a prairie farm in Alberta or a cornfield in BC’s Fraser Valley, in the summer. I look at the barns and grain silos that tower over endless fields, and I wonder about the farmers who work in them. Being a farmer’s daughter who came from a small community, I’ve always been curious about the farming culture in other places.


Now that I live where produce is available in any grocery store, pre-washed, wrapped and ready to go, sometimes I still feel out of place. Gone are the days when I could go into our yard and pick an orange off a tree for breakfast. Gone are the times when I knew who planted what, and which neighbour’s crop was ready to harvest on a certain week.


My old village was a one-street barangay where houses weren’t numbered, even up to this day. The town postman found people by asking the first resident he met. A response would be something like: ‘Juan Atienza? He lives by that little store. I’m going that way. I could drop his mail off for you.’


Back in my childhood, people helped each other out without expecting to be paid. When someone needed to build a house or weed a field, word was sent and helpers came, in exchange for free meals and the knowledge that when one of them needed similar assistance, people would turn up without question.


When a family hosted a wedding, usually a three-day affair, everyone came to chop wood, fetch water, build the canopy, and contribute live chickens and sacks of rice. Even assist in cooking huge vats of food. These would be the same people who would sing and dance on the eve of the ceremony, and bring their families to the reception next day. When you invited one person, you cooked for ten, because you had to assume their whole brood was coming.


There was trust among neighbours. I recall the days when only one family had a TV set, a gigantic black and white console sitting in their living room. During big basketball tournaments, the village menfolk turned up in this family’s living room to watch the games. All their slippers were left lined in pairs outside the front door. The noise and camaraderie would last until the wee hours, because the audience stayed back to discuss the results. Many times, according to my brother, if the family decided to go to bed early, they’d ask people to please close the door before going.


It was a real shock when I left the farm to live in the city. Neighbours locked their doors. You kept your stuff, like slippers, inside the house so no one could steal it. You tethered your dog because if you lost it, it could end up being someone’s dinner. You had to pay people if you wanted them to do things for you.


I found it even less personal when I lived in Singapore. Our front door was face-to-face with the door of the next condo unit. Its occupants and I sometimes took the elevators together. But never, in the three years I lived there, did we exchange any real conversation or introduced ourselves.


Canada is different from Singapore in many ways. It’s friendlier. Neighbours are inclined to chat over the fence, even look out for each other. I love it here.


Yet I feel the constant call of rural life. I suppose it’s because I left the place when I was so young, before I really needed to leave the village. I suppose there’s much truth to a North American saying that you can take the boy, or girl, out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of them.


My mind is filled with possibly unattainable, possibly foolish thoughts, of one day re-living the past. My secret wish is to buy back the old family farm, --- long since sold to a sugar cane farmer --- repopulate it with fruit-bearing trees, and retire there. Not that I did much farming as a child. I mainly swung on a little hammock under the house and sang loudly while the rest of the family were either weeding the rice field or harvesting it. I left the farm to go to school in the city at age 9. Perhaps the farm and I have unfinished business.


My three daughters who were all born and bred in the big city will certainly find my desire to grow old on a farm strange, or even scary. They’re used to a relatively mud-free environment, where they didn’t have to walk a mile to procure something. They hop into a vehicle and ride everywhere. They have their malls, their Internet, and their cell phones.


They may not know what to do on a rural setting today, but given the chance I’m sure they would love living on a farm as much as I did. After all, they do play Farmville. Rural culture flows in their blood.


(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, Feb 15, 2011 issue)