THE carabao, still seen today--by not a few farming people--as their chief beast of burden, has carried the weight off the shoulders of a former drug dependent and given a lovelorn woman in Nueva Ecija a way to momentarily forget her pain. Today, they talk about that 360-degree turn that changed their lives.

Aside from the Visayas and Mindanao, farmers in Luzon share their own great success tale that served as sidebar to the National Carabao Conference held here recently with the theme, “Nagsipag, Nagnegosyo, Nagtagumpay!”

CORN SILAGE Isagani Cajucom (standing, right) watches a forage chopper for milling corn silage in Lupao, Nueva Ecija that produces at least 300 tons every corn harvest. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
CORN SILAGE Isagani Cajucom (standing, right) watches a forage chopper for milling corn silage in Lupao, Nueva Ecija that produces at least 300 tons every corn harvest. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Corn silage involves the processing of corn that is about to be thrown as agricultural waste and used for animal feed. With this new technology, the corn feed is placed in the silo and later on processed. Cajucom has 14 hectares of land devoted to corn silage. After four years of hard work on the land, he earned P220,000 within three months.

Domingo learned the mechanics of the trade and had aimed at building his own silage processing house in his barangay (village). The nightmares from his drug use were also gradually coming few and far between.

Get the latest news
delivered to your inbox
Sign up for The Manila Times newsletters
By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Today, Domingo never tires of telling his story to anyone who cares to listen, especially those who like him once kept “company” with drugs or those who have not kicked the habit. Most of all, he said, he was able to regain the family life he thought he had lost. There is joy and much laughter at home now, all hands are on deck at the modest silage manufacturing endeavor he started.

Domingo’s journey and his testimony has also led to the discovery of lives parallel to his.

Another story about a daughter of Catalina Vizda of Santo Domingo, Nueva Ecija, a member of the Pulong-buli Multipurpose Cooperative that tends 14 buffalo heads that the Carabao Center leased to them in 1998.

With this start-up, Vizda became the leading carabao milk producer in the area and found the seed from which she grew the family fortune. In the early days, everyone in her family rose at dawn everyday. At 4 a.m. they lined up to milk the carabaos. The milk is then sold at P42 a liter to the Nueva Ecija Federation of Dairy Carabao Cooperative. The family was able to send the four children to college from the proceeds of this venture.

A similar story of couple Anacleto and Dionisia Cabie of San Jose City tells about their daughter, Jobelle, a 3rd year Veterinary Science and Medicine student at the CLSU. She, however, was nursing a broken heart.

As everybody in the family had to wake up at 4 a.m. every day to milk their 10 carabaos, Jobelle was lazy to rise because of a breakup with her boyfriend. She was downtrodden. Noticing this, her mother encouraged her to make herself busy instead. Little by little, she was motivated to join the ritual of waking up at dawn to milk the carabaos. The small industry grew bigger. The family sold the milk at P40 a liter to the Nueva Ecija Federation of Dairy Carabao Cooperative and the family was able to send the five children to high school and college.

Jobelle was unhappy no more. She found solace in her daily role of helping milk their carabaos. She turned to Facebook and posted: “Nagmahal, Nabigo, Nangalabaw [Fell in love, despaired, turned to raising carabaos],” which briefly told of her love tale and got over 2,000 likes mostly from the PCC, campus students, friends and classmates.

Bumanlag confirmed the heartwarming FB posts of students and employees of the CLSU. By the way, these posts have generated more than a hundred thousand likes as of this writing.

CELSO M. CAJUCOM