Blog

We’re glad to have our Day by Day Christian friends led by Pastor Danny Ibarrola at Our Farm Republic today. They left Manila at 5am just so they can still enjoy an early farm tour. Thank you Tito Cezar Garcia for helping organize the trip to our farm.

Cocoons and caterpillars — beautiful lessons about life can be learned from our beloved creatures at Our Farm Republic. Here’s the cocoon and caterpillar of Pachliopta aristolochiae, common name Common Rose butterfly, a swallowtail butterfly that has a red body and black wings.

Are these satsumi oranges? Somehow we’ve lost its tree tag, maybe because it took a long time to bear fruits…well hey, finally it gave us a nice surprise this morning.

Things are getting better at the farm with a variety of fruits to harvest. Happy farming indeed!

Batwan is a fruit normally just found in Eastern Visayas and is a traditional souring agent in dishes around those parts. Last time I tasted its fruit was at Pamela Henares’ house in Bacolod and I loved it so much I had to take some seeds home. Now that it’s fruiting here, in Pangasinan, I can’t wait until they’re ready!

It seems like we are going to have a great harvest (one out of the three trees is hitik sa bunga).

Maybe will ask our cook from Bohol to use it for a bangus dish. It’s time to do it the Ilonggo way. After all, Ilonggos, like Kapampangans, are known for their mouthwatering local cuisine.

Farmers from Ifugao, through a project spearheaded by the Ifugao State University, recently conducted their Good Agricultural Practices and organic farming benchmarking activity at Our Farm Republic. Thank you, ISU Dean Teresita Allig for bringing your project beneficiaries to us. We hope the farmers were able to learn from our farm’s practices and will be able to adapt and apply them to their respective farms.

Today, our lovely, sweet, explode-in-your-mouth cherry tomatoes are in the spotlight through one of our suki members of the media, Joanne Ponsoy of Balitang Amianan/GMA Regional TV.

 

Ever seen a plant that looks like a bunch of Q-tips? Presenting, our Starburst Bush (identified by one of our friends via Google Lens–technology is SUCH a BLESSING!)!

 

Our Farm Republic is honored and humbled to have welcomed our new Department of Tourism Regional Director Jeff Ortega recently during his two-day tour of farm tourism sites across Pangasinan. We had the full support of our beloved Agricultural Training Institute RTC1 Director Rogelio Evangelista and TESDA-Pangasinan Acting Provincial Director Rosa Untalan who joined us in welcoming RD Ortega to Our Farm Republic. Also present was our ever -supportive Pangasinan Tourism and Cultural Affairs Office head Malu Amor- Elduayan.

We gave RD Ortega the grand tour of Our Farm Republic so he’d get a feel of what our guests experience when coming to the farm.

Thank you for visiting and we hope to see you again soon!

 

Remember the Smart Digital Farmers Program 101 we participated in last November? They awarded the winners today and…we won! Both of our entries tied for first place.

We would like to thank Smart, the Probe Foundation, and ATI-RTC1 for the opportunity to learn from and work with all of you. We are very much honored and privileged to be a part of this very creative activity together with our fellow 1-SIKAT members.

Thank you also to all of you who watched the video, had a good laugh with Ang Probinsiyana, and identified with the sentiments of Magsasaka Ako, happily commented, liked, sent heart emoticons, and shared our two videos.

For hearing us and allowing us to share our stories, our advocacies, and our plight, we are truly grateful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ate Marge and Robert got up bright and early today to harvest these fresh, sweet, plump cherry tomatoes from our garden. We’re super excited to use these in our dishes. We hope this is a good sign of the year ahead!