Vegetables grow in vacant lots at the Himlayan ng Bayan cemetery.
Photo by Armand Galang
TALAVERA, Nueva Ecija – The public cemetery in Barangay Poblacion here has been the launch pad of the municipality’s biggest nutrition program, anchoring on organic vegetable farming.
Mayor Nerivi Santos-Martinez said that while organic farming is widespread in his town as every village here has its huge gardens in barangay hall compounds, road shoulders, schools and households, this has not stopped it to from expanding to n vacant lots of Himlayan ng Bayan over a year ago.
“Nagsimula ang lahat ng ito sa Himlayan ng Bayan kung saan natin nakita ang mga simpleng hakbang para maging mabunga ang mga halaman sa paraang organic,” Martinez said. he vegetable garden in “Himalayan” is being overseen by her father, municipal administrator Nerito Santos.
“We found out that our soil is fertile enough to produce quality vegetables as string beans, eggplants, tomatoes and papaya,” she added. Santos has since entertained visitors, particularly village and educations officials, at a rest place in a corner of the cemetery to demonstrate the farming program.
Santos would also prepare lunch from the harvests for visitors. Visitors can also take out tomato candies produced from the garden. This gave birth to the Gulayan sa Barangay, Paaralan at Bakuran Program which is now in full swing. Dante Al Fernandez, head of the outermost village of Bulac, said eating without viand is never a scene in the neighborhood.
“Kung tutuusin, bawal ang magutom dito sa amin dahil sobra-sobra na ang gulay at may inaani namang palay,” he said, noting that every household has its own garden on top of the free spaces such as road shoulders, edges of irrigation dikes and unattended lots that served as common planting areas.
Bulac residents plant eggplants, okra, tomato, bottle gourd (upo), loofah (patola), onion and string beans among others. Malunggay trees are also planted along barangay roads. Churchgoers in an adjacent chapel would walk down the aisle of vegetables at both sides of its compound planted now to fruiting tomatoes, eggplants and beans, leaving only about two meters of concrete pathway.
An 800-square meter lot in Barangay San Pascual has been a wealthy source of food for families affected by recent typhoons as barangay officials prepared food for the evacuees in a nearby gymnasium. Mixed with noodles, patola and upo harvested from the village’s gulayan had been enough for them, said Barangay Chair Gerlad Fermin.
In Barangay Pulong San Miguel, the 400-square-meter backyard of resident Gloria Domingo would not be left behind as at least 21 kinds of trees and vegetables are grown using, like all of them, organic fertilizer in their own small vermicomposting facilities.
“Talagang kami na ang gumagawa na pataba,” she said. They use animal manure, earthworms and leaves. Aside from vegetables planted in plastic containers and sacks, her backyard is also planted with chico, banana, pomelo, rambutan, lemon, guyabano, guava, calamansi, and alibangbang.
The same scenes can be found at the compound of the Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology – Municipal Government of Talavera (NEUST-MGT). Earlier this year, Rodrigo Del Prado and his wife had their terrace on the second floor of their house in Barangay Sierra fully tiled, complete with decorative stones.
But he decided to have it full of vegetables in used cans, sacks and plastic containers. “Ngayon ay nagpapamigay na kami ng gulay sa mga kapitbahay,” he said. His family, he said, has enjoyed the sight of fruiting vegetables a few steps from the door.
The village officials and ordinary residents admitted having initiated the widespread planting of vegetables when Gulayan sa Barangay, Paaralan, at Bakuran was launched by the municipal government led by Martinez last August.
But while the program embraces only three particular places (barangay hall, schools and backyards), they themselves decided to further it even “without the prospect of winning any price.” Martinez said the town government created the program to instil in the people, including the youth, the value of using resources and health. To make it sustainable, a continuous evaluation of the project is being scheduled from Sept. 1, 2014 to Jan. 4, 2015.
The ultimate goal of the program, she added, is to have all households planting on their own.
