Baao Offers Agro-Tourism

BAAO, Camarines Sur, April 13 (PNA) - A four-hectare agro-tourism hub along the national highway here is not only a leisure farm where one can find respite and take time to commune with nature but a "pick-your-own-vegetable" organic food production base.
Under this treat, visitors of the La Huerta De los Santos farm in Barangay Sta. Teresita of this farming town some 20 kilometers northeast of Naga City can harvest for themselves the vegetables of their choice that they wanted to buy at farm gate prices either for take home, or cook them fresh for dining.
Vegetable varieties available on seasonal basis are bitter gourd (ampalaya), white gourd (upo), string beans, eggplant, tomato, okra, squash and several other high-value food crops grown through organic farming.
Also available are herbal and ornamental plants planted all over the artistically designed landscape and inter-cropped with mix varieties of shade and fruit-bearing trees providing lush vegetation all over the place that serves as a preserved area of nature.
Although located just along the busy Maharlika Highway, the rich vegetation and diverse crops - a mix of food crops, ornamental and herbal plants planted all over the place make tourists and visitors think that they are in some far away rural barangay.
This one of a kind farm was single-handedly developed and being run by Bernadette de los Santos who was once a medical sales representative, a teacher, and an artist.
"This venture is not only fun and enjoyable. It gives you a sense of appreciation of the bounty and wonders of farming and nature," De los Santos said on Monday as explained why she developed interest in farming even as it was not her line of education and experience.
De los Santos holds degrees in business administration and education from Ateneo de Manila University and her first employment after graduation was as a medical representative for a prestigious pharmaceutical firm in Metro Manila.
She later on accepted a teaching career offered by a posh private elementary school in the metropolis but cut short her stint with it when she was enticed by a relative to migrate to London where she worked for a while.
She then went to the US and after passing board examinations for teachers in California and Oregon, she pursued her teaching career there.
Part of her pastimes in the US was visiting and observing farm activities at the vast agricultural farms in Salinas, California which is considered the "salad bowl" of the USA.
De los Santos said, she was amazed by the productivity of the highly mechanized vegetable farms. She also visited various ornamental gardens.
It was then that she developed keen interest on farming and when she returned home to here, Delos Santos said she developed the four-hectare family farm which had been left idle for sometime into something productive.
She utilized a portion of her farm for the techno-demo of the hybrid tomato (Diamante variety) of the East-West Seeds company and using organic fertilizer, she harvested an average of 111 kilos of tomatoes per harvest and earned an income of about P17,000.
The lady farmer since then became an advocate of organic farming as she set up a compost pit in a portion of her farm where grasses, rice hull, leaves and other farm wastes are decomposed and later used as fertilizer.
"I patterned this 'pick-your-own vegetable' that is widely practiced in the US where buyers or consumers buy directly from the farm and harvest the vegetables of their choice so that they themselves are given the chance to appreciate the wonders of farming as I do", De los Santos said.
She also expresses joy over the fact that farmers in her neighborhood have also followed after her. They have started planting tomatoes and other vegetables-utilizing the once vacant lots under coconut. (PNA)