A farm with a soul

After working for eight years for the Beers company in New York as an accountant-comptroller, Edith Tobias had had enough of corporate responsibilities. Today you find her weeding, planting herbs and vegetables, and processing and bottling sauces of basil, turmeric and tarragon in a small (2,600 sq. m.) farm in Calamba, Laguna. The place is her unquantifiable diamond: not only is it a model of ecological organic farming; it is a venue for young children to identify, smell and taste herbs, make edible dips and skin lotions, create their own herb gardens, as well as appreciate fowls they probably never saw in their neighborhood in the city.

Edith calls the place "Soul Organic Farm" because, she says, "the place has a soul and a conscience." Unlike agricultural endeavor that grow vegetables in commercial quantities which call for the use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, hers uses strictly organic boosters made from leaves of trees, cutting, weeds and cow manure.

This ecological school, says Edith, hopes to teach children preservation of biodiversity, develop awareness of the importance of herbs using the five senses, encouraging children to recycle, and study biological pest control. They see how native facilities like the tapayan (water jug) and bibingkahan (clay pot used for making rice cakes) are used, and make toys out of like nests and tiny huts out of twigs, weeds and branches. "We show them the joy of having pure, wholesome fun without electronic games."

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Arrangements for the ecology tour are made with school administrators. Each child is charged P250; this includes lunch and a snack, and taking home food or dips they cook up (like pizza with herbs and kesong puti with tarragon butter) and toys they make. P50 is returned to the school. A program in the works will invite students from public schools to visit the farm.

The kids are guided through a farm grown to more than 400 species of trees, shrubs and plants. For the first time they get to smell and taste culinary herbs, and see how leaves and barks of medicinal plants can help ease stomach cramps, a toothache, bruises and other ailments. A variety of vegetables climb up trellises, from upo to patola, Baguio and string beans, fattened with dried cow dung. A fenced area has chickens which the children feed. Lectures and workshops are held in two bahay kubos. Edith says most of the proteges go home bursting with new-found knowledge and asking their mothers that they grow their own garden.

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Helping get the ecology school organized are Edith’s husband, Jing Tobias, a business management graduate of De La Salle University, and their three daughters, who thought of the farm’s name, and design the company logo and promo materials. But the joy of the family is granddaughter Jade, 6, who knows the names of all the herbs, and enjoys growing plants. Edith says Jade can hardly wait for schooldays to be over so she can hie off to the farm.

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During weekdays, Edith processes and bottles products out of herbs grown in the farm. To start with, she makes sun-dried tomato pesto, turmeric with chorizo and garlic, and herbal vinaigrette. The products were launched last month during the Bio-Search 2002 trade fair at the Philippine Training and Trading Center. Jing handles the marketing of the bottled specialties. For inquiries on the school and the bottled products, call 8968146 and 0916 3258684.