Saturday. I was woken up by the sound of the alarm clock and it was a miracle I didn’t ask for extra 5 minutes and another 10 minutes. It’s 4 AM and everyone was still asleep. I went out of my room, tipped toed to my sister’s bedroom, and knock. She is the only sister I always get along with in terms of outdoor activities because my other siblings have different hobbies.
The other night we scheduled a visit to my grandparents again. Our day’s activity would be harvesting sweet potatoes from my parent's small patch of land. We were so excited to do the harvesting because it would be the first time for my sister and a few experience for me. When I was younger, I cut the developing cassava instead of the wild grass growing around it. so the next time I joined the farm works and gardening, they didn’t let me help. My only task after my carelessness was to collect and pile the harvested crops in one place.
When we went out of our house to start our course, the world was still sleeping unbothered by the tip-tap of our footsteps. As we reached our destination, the sun was already coming out from the green meadows and our grandmother was already pasturing the animals. We asked for her whereabouts and picked her for breakfast.
After breakfast, we wrapped our snacks and brought an empty sack. We wasted no time and started to ascend to where we would reap the sweet potatoes.
My grandmother and I cut away some vines and loosened the soil around the crops. We used our hands to pull up the primary crown and carefully dug the sweet potatoes out of the soil. My sister had a hard time locating potatoes so she decided to just collect and put them into the empty sack (sounds familiar lol). Meanwhile, the sun was very generous in giving us scorching heat and ultraviolet rays (haha).
After two hours, my sister and I seek shelter under a tree and give ourselves the luxury of cool air while my grandma left to transfer her carabao somewhere. We rested for minutes and dug again. We decided to dig what we can carry and took a rest, ate our puto balanghoy snacks, drunk water and went to our grandparents' house.
Puto balanghoy -steamed cake made of grated cassava and sugar.
Sweet potatoes estimated 30 kgs
After harvesting, we spent the day walking around the place enjoying the picturesque mountain that nature endowed us with.
Since I was young I witnessed how my grandparents toil away on the farm without a day off and would only give time to church and work again. They worked side by side on the land they strove so hard to acquire until their octogenarian(present). They should have felt muscle and joint pains but we hear no complaints from them. They are just so grateful of what they have and what they could give us . Even their children have jobs, they still keep on giving us what they can give from the farm. They even gave their children parts of their rice fields. That is how selfless they are. When my grandpa became sick, my grandma did all the works on their farm.
My grandmother
Saying we are lucky is a major understatement. I’m so proud they are my grandparents.
Thank you for your unconditional love.
-gold
