By the way, there was one thing I forgot to tell you about farming. Let me drop it here...

During my childhood days when my parents were farming, my mother also does not stop tending for animals. It is not many. It is not like we had stock farm but it still helped both for our consumption and income generation.

We had pigs, native chickens, dogs, cats, at times goats, carabao. I took care of them all (well, I actually just played with the carabao). The cats, dogs and carabao are for our help, guarding the house and tending the farm. I did not like the goats much because of their smell. And I cannot bathe them like pigs.The rest are mostly the ones we utilize for extra income.

It was my automatic duty that I feed the pigs and chicken when I get home from school in the afternoon. I look for the goats wherever grassy area they were left and take them home. Then cook steamed rice. After that, I'll run away and play until dark. We usually get out of school at 4:00pm so there is still time to play after my duties. When I get home, my mother is either done or still cooking for viand. 😜

My mother's strategy was to have mother animals and we let them multiply. We then sell most of the small produce but leave a few. These few will become our next batch to multiply again so the cycle continues.

I remember one time when our pig bore 11 piglets. I was so happy playing with them. Imagine me playing with piglets in the pig pen. We sold eight of the piglets and kept the other three. My mother made sure that we keep at least one female to reproduce again. When these piglets are big enough, we sell their mother.

We also attempted several times to maintain a fish pond with tilapia in the farm but it was not sustainable because water lizards were faster than us in gathering the fishes. We plant fingerlings and they slowly disappear as they grow bigger. There was once we planted full grown tilapias and only a few were left the following day. 😃

My mother has this belief of not letting our home without any animal. She was saying that animals, regardless of what it is, are our guards. It is like if something bad or evil comes to the house or our family, the animals will catch the bad or evil thing first instead of us. I do not know where she got such belief but she keeps it. When our only dog died (we suspected being poisoned by the neighborhood), my mother said we need to look for a replacement. Our home will always have at least one animal while she is alive, she said.