We have a small farm at the back of our house. I don't know if it can be called a farm though, but we grow stuff. I haven't ever mentioned this in a any of my posts, and that's because I haven't been home to get follow up photos.
I've been home[my parents house] for about 3 days now, and it feels good to be back here. As soon as I arrived, one of the first things I checked was the plantain farm at the back of the house.
Plantain is one of my favorite fruits ever[Yes! Plantain is a fruit]. And I was excited to see that my dad still takes care of it. Of course he should.
My dad is an agriculturist. Aside from being a course he studied in college, he actively participated in agriculture. Especially since my granddad was an agriculturist too. So He[my dad] was inducted into agriculture from birth.
Well, I don't have high interests in participating in agriculture, but I fancy joining my dad in doing some farm work.
So I've shown you photos of the plantain farm. We've also got a guava tree.
My dad didn't exactly plant it. We just discovered it growing, when we moved into our house. And we began to nurture it. I don't exactly know what specie of guava we got, but it's the sweet one. I really like it.
I plucked some this morning to eat.
While writing this post, I did a Google search for guava and discovered that it has lot of health benefits. Prior to reading that article, I simply ate guava because it was a fruit and was nice. After reading that article, I decided I'll be deliberate about eating guava going forward.
We used to have several pawpaw trees in the farm too. Unfortunately, due to certain new changes in the house, my dad had to cut them down.
Aside from fruits, we've got some vegetables in the compound. We've got bitter leaf, scent leaf, and water leaf. Then we also got this medicinal tree called moringa or the drumstick tree.
The bitter leaf is highly sought after in Nigeria. It is medicinal and can be used to cure several kinds of ailments. Aside from it's medicinal value, it also an ingredient in preparing some local soups. In fact, it has its own dedicated soup called "Bitter leaf soup" or "Ofe Onugbu". Unfortunately, I don't like the soup. However, I can eat other soups prepared with the vegetable. An example is "Egusi soup" which is my favorite soup.
The scent leaf also known as wild basil is another medicinal vegetable that is also used in cooking. I think it got its name scent leaf due to the fact that it actually has a scent.
The moringa tree is very important in today's natural/herbal medicine. Its health benefits are vast. The tree was planted by my dad at the request of my mom. She usually boiled the leaves and drank the extract every morning.
Aside from the fruits/vegetables I mentioned, we used to have several others. We have had pineapple, garden egg, okra, etc. Unfortunately we can't have all these again. Except my dad decides to buy a land and farm in it.
Well, that's all from our little farm.