Manang Lita’s Garden: How a Farm Road Grows Dreams in Maslog

Posted on July 11, 2026 at 7:55 am

Before the asphalt came, Manang Lita would wake at 4 a.m., her hands already knowing the way to the dark corners of her vegetable garden. At 53, her back bears the map of decades spent bending over rows of tomatoes, string beans, and eggplants – each furrow a line of struggle, each harvest a small victory for her family.

By 5 a.m., she and her husband Karding would load their wooden cart with crates of produce, walking two hours down a muddy trail to reach the shore, where a motorbanca waited. For five long hours, their goods would ride the choppy waters toward mainland Dolores, where traders would buy what hadn’t bruised or wilted in the heat and river spray. More than once, Manang Lita watched her entire week’s work turn to loss, the vegetables rotting before they could reach market – yet she never stopped planting.

“There were nights I’d cry into my pillow, wondering if we’d ever get our children through school,” she says, her weathered hands folding into each other as she sits on the porch of their nipa hut, overlooking the garden that has fed and shaped her family. “But Karding would tell me – ‘The earth doesn’t give up on us, so we can’t give up on it.’”

Karding tends to the coconut groves that climb the hills behind their home, his machete singing against the rough bark as he harvests copra. Together, they have raised four children, every centavo from their fields and trees poured into notebooks, uniforms, and fares. For years, the journey to market was a battle against time and tide – motorbancas would sometimes be delayed for days by storms, leaving them with no choice but to sell their crops for pennies to local buyers, or let them go to waste.

“I’d calculate how many notebooks a crate of tomatoes could buy,” Manang Lita recalls. “When the waves were bad, I’d go to the garden and talk to the plants – ‘Please hold on a little longer. My children need you.’”

Their eldest, Elenita, grew up watching this daily fight. She would wake early to help her parents pack produce, her small hands carefully wrapping vegetables in banana leaves to protect them from the journey. While other children played by the shore, she spent her afternoons studying under the shade of a coconut tree, her books spread over a wooden plank balanced on two rocks. Last june, she graduated with a degree in education – the first in their family to finish college – and will soon start teaching at the local elementary school.

“She tells me she became a teacher because she wants other children here to know there’s a way out of the mud and the river,” Manang Lita says, her eyes glistening with tears she doesn’t let fall. “But I tell her – we didn’t just grow vegetables. We grew dreams.”

Then came the change they never dared to hope for. Last year, the government completed a farm-to-market road that winds through the hills of Maslog, connecting their remote barangay directly to Dolores. Where they once walked for hours and sailed for longer, they now load their produce onto a small truck and reach market in less than an hour. The vegetables arrive fresh, the prices are better, and for the first time in their lives, Manang Lita and Karding don’t have to choose between feeding their family and sending their children to school.

On a recent morning, Manang Lita stands in her garden as the sun rises over the mountains, her hands buried in the rich soil as she plants new seedlings. The road hums in the distance – a quiet promise of what’s to come. Her second child is now in college studying agriculture, determined to bring modern farming techniques to their community. The third is in senior high, dreaming of becoming an engineer who builds more roads for places like Maslog. The youngest still helps in the garden after school, but she does so knowing that the journey to market is no longer a gamble with their future.

“Before, the road was just mud and rocks,” Manang Lita says, running her fingers over a ripe tomato. “Now, it’s a path. Every seed we plant, every harvest we bring – it all leads somewhere better. We didn’t just grow vegetables. We grew a future.”

As she loads the morning’s pickings onto their truck, she looks back at the garden that has been her life’s work. The sun catches the dew on the leaves, turning each drop into a tiny jewel – a reminder that even in the harshest soil, with the right support, anything can grow.

Photo by:  Beejay Balagbis | Vanguard