OH MY GOODNESS!

My Intimate Moments With A Constant Urban Gardener.

Article & Photos by Jun Reynales.

The year was 1993 when then newly-married couple Carol & Iñaki Goitia started their home gardening venture with just a little spot in their home, little did they know that they will become both passionately into growing organic vegetables that will change their personal lives and to that of their neighbours in Sun Valley Subdivision in Parañaque City.

As Iñaki Goitia was then working with that exclusive 5-start hotel in the middle of Makati City’s business district, Carol, the ever-curious on how to make things work, seemed to have encountered difficulties in balancing finances in a new relationship environment, seeing the costs of groceries as trivial as vegetables starting to go beyond reach (and that was still in the early 90s mind you), decided to act aggressively about it. I knew Carol way

back prior to her escape out from the corporate jungle as a go-getter and focused business tactician. Now without a corporate job to back her up, in a newly-established personal relationship in a married environment, she decided to face the challenge and learn new things in this new unchartered environment to her – being a housewife.

She loves the challenges of doing fancy home

cooked meals for her husband and her family sans the costs of buying the ingredients that the markets and groceries offered. She loves doing and creating exciting and exotic delectable dishes but gets turned off with the hefty price tags on each items. One day, she had enough of it and decided to grow her own food. Yes, she decided that early back then that it was best to plant and harvests the vegetables and plants – by her own. So she starting drafting and plotting a course to achieve such objective (as if likened to a challenging tasked she once was accustomed with unfazed in a corporate setting), she purchased and researched through the different plant and agricultural magazines throughout the different book shops within Metro Manila (back then the internet world still does not exist); she followed through with different trials and errors, while along the way becoming more observant on how lives of

plants and environment grows, and was even teased once by Iñaki, “Honey, are you watching how the plant grows ?” Little did he know that in the near future, almost after two decades, they’d both observe and with much experience be able to share such wonders. But at that time the revelation of their new passion has not yet been fully seen and clearly valued. For it was the beginning for what was yet to come.

As Carol grew more passionate in her growing vegetables, she has done different ways of doing them at first; she did grew in a hydroponic method, then she did it by aquaponic method (and her Tilapia fishes grew big and getting too much for the aquarium... was eventually given a sentence by grilling and an ice cold beer, if you know what I mean. Hehe!) Both of them also became experienced bee farmers and harvests regularly raw fresh honey and bees wax. Thanks to their queen bee and her honey bees, their honey produced are often ordered by some who are into producing cosmetics, and other organic market businesses that you’ve probably encountered on weekends in some organic market events or festivals around Metro Manila. Chances are likely that some of the items being sold came from this passionate couple.

Fast forward to February 2019, Carol is now more experienced and more compassionate urban grower, with years of experience invested on a daily labour of love and sacrifices for their vegetable garden, now regularly produces good harvests that she and her husband shares to their families, their friends, and neighbours who are but often delighted to receive such delicious items free from the couple.

In our recent conversation, I asked Carol – “Is your being an urban gardener giving you satisfaction?” She replied unequivocally, “Yes!”  “You see,” she added “from the first excitement in harvesting my first carrots, my first giant squash, my giant bananas, and other harvested produce was incomparable and cannot be match to whatever achievements I had when I was once working in a corporate world in the city. No match at all.” She beamed proudly.

“How comparable is it then, vis-a-vis now, that you’re pretty much a regular

urban gardener, toiling and tending to your garden daily exposed to the elements?” I asked her. “Totally different now from way back then” she responded, “I was merely working back then to survive by doing routine day office job day in day out.” “Paradoxically, our simpler less-complicated life as an urban gardener or farmer as you may call it as such, gives as much sense of accomplishment today. Now we live to exist and not just to survive. So different life and more appreciative of what nature gives us back as we pay our respect to it.” She quipped.

Exponentially her harvests grew more beyond to what her family and friends can consume, enabling her to share her produce to her village neighbours albeit without asking them even for a single centavo as fee. Ironically, through her good deeds, she gets paid still by her neighbours

without any demand from her and tells her, “just think of it as our little contributions to your efforts to our community and as a joyful reward from the efforts you’ve made.” Sheepishly, she gives in. “Your efforts to our community is God’s gift and we thank you for sharing it with us” as one Spaniard neighbour expressed to her. Every so often, her growing circles of friends from the urban farming or gardening community (and they are growing steadfastly fast) ask Carol on emergency situations, “Carol, we need your help! We’ll buy whatever harvestable items – be it romaine lettuce, carrots, honey, basil, other herbs you got – for our upcoming

vegetarian (or organic) trade show as we want your items. We’ll pay you any amount.” which they actually did. Getting paid or sharing for free their produce and harvest as what they both said, “We cannot eat all of them by ourselves and instead of rotting we rather give it out and share.” “Sharing beyond what you can take is just plainly the right thing to do, as a human being, as a person responsible to his or her fellow being.” Well said. You cannot get anymore satisfaction or accomplishment from such life experience!

On the recent issues with regards to the country’s vegetable problems that mismatched to what is needed by the people, I asked “In your own little way, how would

you help suggest to address such concern with regards to produce getting spoiled and left rotting and just merely left to be discarded?”

Carol simply replied, “As an intrepid urban gardener or as a city-farming advocate, I would suggest doing a multi-cropping approach like what I have been doing for a couple of years now. And that we’re all responsible to making sure that we instead start our own little vegetable garden at home. Nothing fancy nor big, even to just having to grow them in small pots (even old recycled plastic bottles and containers would do), just placing them in a small place... and be responsible about it.” “You see” she added, “the vegetables you produce by your own efforts in your garden taste deliciously different compare to those bland ones sold in the supermarket or groceries, because you know for a fact that you will not introduce fertilizers that will eventually be harmful for your plant, the environment, and eventually to yourself.”  A simple yet logical advice from an experienced urban farming advocate indeed. You are responsible to yourself, your family, your friends, and much more to your community.

She later then shared a story about this celery they both from a supposed “reputable

and reliable” exclusive supermarket or grocery. That celery was so innocently freshly-looking and one fine dandy attractive to feast on. Unfortunately, something came up and they have to be away from home and travel to the countryside to work on their bee farming production for three months. All that time it was left inside their refrigerator at home.

Arriving three months afterwards, she checked her refrigerator to clean it, she was morbidly horrified to see the celery looking as fresh as they first both it – three months ago! Likened to a scene from an old Hitchcock horror movie, she hurriedly got rid of it and cleaned her refrigerator pronto. “Imagine, had we not left the house and consumed that item, we would have ingested unwittingly whatever

chemicals that vegetable was soaked with and created a horrifying damage to both our health and to that of our family?” as what Carol confessed. “God is definitely good to us and save us from such trouble.” She continued.

“So what’s next for you?” I asked Carol.

“From here on, I look forward more to showcase my urban garden or my small vegetable farm lot within the city, in this case, inside Sun Valley Subdivision here in Parañaque City, as a future alternative venue for possible location for environmentally-sounding event like a garden painting seminar event, or a pottery-making event, or a small circle of friends gathering place where friends can enjoy a simple atmosphere of fresh clean air while enjoying your events, as you get to feast off the produce freshly picked from the grounds, cleaned and ready to eat.” “I know it’s still a long way to achieve that but the plan is heading towards that now” she added, “and through this way we can help campaign our advocacy of

sharing our years of experiences to those who truly would want to do urban farming”. She told me proudly. “All they have to do is call me so we can set things in order the day they’ll need my garden.” Sounding excited to the prospect of sharing to others her garden as a simple place for events.

It was such a simple yet fulfilling time spent with this couple – Carol & Iñaki Goitia – sharing their life experiences in urban farming (or gardening to some), learning new trivial things on how to plant, how to make this and that, but most important of all was the value of sharing to what is beyond you can consume and offer to share to families, friends, neighbours without unequivocal expectation of rewards. That simple way of sharing, surprisingly gets good effects towards those who have encountered them, and surprisingly earned rewards far more than what they’ve expected, much more anticipated. It was such a humbling experience for me interviewing them. Like the plants in their garden, the plants bloomed bountiful, the couple bloomed popularly and well-loved by the community!

For not only that be considered a Constant Urban Gardener for me but more so as

a consummate God-loving, neighbour-friendly and compassionately environment-advocate unassuming couple I was most fortunate to have met this one fine afternoon this month of February. Such an apt time to have a wonderful encounter, coincidentally, as it fell just right in time in the middle of that season of love.

Well, until my next travel adventure and new story to come along, I wait. For now, as I feast on a freshly-picked salad seated in an open-air garden enjoying such a wonderful company with this couple, on life’s simple miracle, indeed... Life is Good!