Have you ever heard the cry of a farmer's soul? or Have you ever heard the filipino folk song, Planting is not a joke or in filipino "Magtanim ay di biro" by Bulilit Singers. If you're a fellow filipino I'm sure you heard it already and sang it in your elementary days or maybe in other occasions. This song explains how difficult planting rice is. Just the past days when the typhoon Paeng hit our country,the lyrics of this song brought back memories when it comes to planting rice.
The moments when we planted those rice from those grains upto now that we're about to harvest it flashed back. But instead to be happy while I reminist those moments, I felt a deep sadness which nearly made me cry. To be honest I cried a little bit for what happened during the typhoon. The wind blew while I looked at the window while the rain was pouring down when the typhoon was still in action and that was the time when I came to my senses that, that's how life works, we're just humans and we can't do a single thing against the will of the nature but we can prevent it for sure if we wanted.
The moment when the rain stopped and the sun shines once again, together with my father we went to the field just to save what the typhoon has left. I looked at our rice that's been submerged and pinned down by the rain and wind, I felt like that there's a sword that strucked my heart and as I looked at the face of my father, the pain doubled causing me to become silent all through out.
A lot of our rice has been pinned down completely which made them to grow roots already as you can see in the photo below. A huge loss already. Some of it were not that wet and we used the chance to harvest them while the sun finally burning up.
As for the grains that completely wet and grew roots already, we harvested them also but it can't be sell anymore or to be milled since it's quality is not good already. I will feed it to my ducks and chicken instead just for it not to go to waste.
Along the process of harvesting our crops that's been damaged by the typhoon, I noticed that my father has been silent also so I had to break it by saying that we will again try next time, for maybe next time our crops will not be affected by typhoons.
He agreed to what I said and I can see the sadness in his face slowly fading away but I'm pretty sure that deep within his soul, he's crying very hard. The atmosphere was still heavy and I can feel it. As his son I want to ease the pain in my father's heart but what can I do. I don't have any powers to do it in the first place but I still want to make way.
That's why as we continue to harvest our crop, I will do my best to be in his side while I lend a hand with the works that's needed to be done.
As I spend longer in the field of farming rice, my heart became closer to it. That's why I've been helping my father ever since I saw the potential in this field wherein a lot of people out there can't see what I see, can't feel what I feel and what a farmer really feels. There's a lot of potential in this field but not all can see it and sometimes they even belittle those farmers who's engaging in this.
Rice farmers has been feeding the world for how many years already especially here in our country but still sometimes they have no value. With that case I'm hoping that it will change in the future. Rice farmers are more valuable than you can think, the same with all the farmers of every crop out there.
This is for today and if you read upto this far, thank you friends.
Life can be our bestfriend but not all the time is it's in favor of us.
-jhero