Our story: the same land since 1940

Short answerOur family has farmed this land in Calamba, Laguna since 1940: rice, sugarcane, tomatoes, squash, eggplants and calamansi, then dragonfruit. Lola Suling farmed it, my father farms it still, and the land around us turned industrial while we kept farming. We teach regenerative farming because it is how we keep the land alive, and because it works.

Where we started

My grandparents, Lola Suling and Lolo Juan, farmed this land in Calamba, Laguna, the way most farms here were farmed: rice in the paddies, sugarcane on the slopes, and vegetables between the seasons. Tomatoes, squash, eggplants, calamansi, and whatever else the family needed from the ground. It was a working farm in the oldest sense: everything it produced was eaten, sold, or fed back into the soil, and most of what it needed came from itself.

That was the farming Lola Suling knew, and the one she taught: keep animals, keep the boundaries planted, return the residues to the land, and the ground keeps producing. She was not following a method or reading a book. She was farming the way the farm had always worked, because the loop had never been broken.

Lola Suling's legacy, and my father's

When Lola Suling passed away, it was my father who continued her legacy by still maintaining the land to farm. That is the part of this story that matters most, and it is worth saying plainly: the easy decision was to let the land go, as the land around us was going. He kept farming it.

He farms it still. And he does more than farm it: he is the president of the Farmers Association in our barangay, working closely with the City of Calamba to keep the people interested in farming educated and active on their own land. The association is where the farming knowledge in this barangay lives, and my father is where the association lives. The training programs, the seed distributions, the composting facilities, the conversations about what to plant: that work is his, and it is the reason this site exists in public rather than as one family's private practice.

The farm today

Viking Farms PH is the farm's name, and it is a working farm in Laguna: dragonfruit as the main cash crop now, with farm animals in the system, and the same land that carried rice, sugarcane, and vegetables still producing. The seven-layer planting described in the method is laid out across it: the canopy above, the dragonfruit vines on their posts, the cash crops and covers below, the animals moving through it.

Everything taught on this site is practiced at our Viking Farms first, in both seasons, on the same land Lola Suling farmed.

Why we teach this

Two reasons, and they are the same reason. The first is the land: the family has kept this farm while the land around it turned industrial, and the method we farm is the reason it is still a farm. Regenerative farming is how the ground stays alive and how the farm pays for being alive, which is the combination that keeps land farming instead of selling. The second is the neighbors: my father's association work exists because the farmers around us are making the same decision our family faced, and the ones who keep farming are the ones with a system that pays. Teaching the method is how that system spreads.

The method on this site is our farming, written down. The compost module is the pile on our farm. The cover-crop module is the munggo on our paddies' edges. The dragonfruit module is our main crop. The measurement module is the notebook in my father's handwriting. Nothing on this site was learned from a book that we did not first test on the ground, in both seasons, in Laguna.

What the land taught us

Three lessons, and they are the spine of the whole method:

• The loop is the farm. Everything the farm produced went back into the soil, and the soil produced everything the farm needed. The loop broke when farms started selling their residues and buying their fertility back. Keeping the loop is the method.
• Continuity is worth more than a season. The land around us went to industrial lots one sale at a time. Each sale was a reasonable decision in a hard year. The farm that kept farming through those hard years is still a farm, and the method that keeps it paying is what continuity looks like in practice.
• The knowledge has to spread or it dies. Lola Suling's farming survived because she taught it, and my father's association work survives because it is shared. A method that lives on one farm is a memory. A method that spreads is a future, which is why this site is public.

What the farm grows now

The crops changed as the method changed them, and the change is worth describing because it is the method's story told in plants. Rice and sugarcane were the grandparents' crops, and the vegetables between the seasons: tomatoes, squash, eggplants, calamansi. Those are still in the family's rotation where the market and the season allow.

Dragonfruit is the main cash crop now: a vine on posts, occupying the vertical layer the farm's area does not count, producing for years from one planting. It is the crop that pays while the covers and the compost build the soil under everything else. The farm animals, chickens and goats, are in the system rather than beside it: they clean the fallen fruit, they scratch and graze the edges, and their manure lands where the next season's compost needs it.

That is the seven-layer planting in practice, and it is also the story in one picture: Lola Suling's mixed farm, a father's continuity, and a cash crop that pays for keeping the land alive. The layers stack because the family never left, and the family never left because the layers stack.

Where to go from here

If you farm, start with what regenerative agriculture actually means, then the first-season plan, which is the method sized to one season on your own land. The full system is in The Method course. If you are deciding whether any of this is for you, the Find Your Path quiz tells you where to start. And if you want the farm itself: it is Viking Farms PH in Calamba, a real place, and the ground everything here was tested on.

The seasons here, as the family runs them

The year on the farm follows the rains, and the method's timing is ours rather than imported. Before the wet season: everything covered, the compost applied and mulched, the drainage checked before the typhoons rather than after. The wet season: the covered ground holds while bare ground washes, and the difference after a storm is the most convincing thing a neighbor ever sees. The dry season: mulch is the irrigation, the deep-rooted dragonfruit rides out the hot weeks, and the covers either tolerate the drought or die back into the next mulch.

That calendar is the one the method teaches, and it is not a translation of anyone's spring and fall. It is the rain we actually get, marked in the notebook by the seasons we actually farm, which is why the timing sections of this site read like field notes rather than like a book.

Frequently asked questions