I grew up on a huge piece of farmland in Northern Mindanao, Philippines that felt like its own world. Coconut trees, sweet potatoes, bananas, rice fields, corn, cassava, ube, mangoes, jackfruit, cocoa, guavas, everything was there.
We never worried about food. All we had to do was plant, take care of the crops, and harvest them. Life was simple, and life was full.
I was around six years old when I first learned how to plant rice. I remember standing in the mud beside the adults, copying their movements, feeling proud every time I placed a seedling straight.
Harvest days were the best. Back then, we didn’t have any machines. We used this tall bamboo stand, four legs, nothing fancy and we’d throw the rice stalks on top and use our feet to crush and shake the grains loose.
The rice would fall below, and the wind would carry away the chaff. It was tiring, but it was our way. And as a kid, I loved it.
The smell of fresh rice, the laughter, everyone moving in rhythm without even talking about it. And while the adults worked, I’d sneak off to the piles of hay and practice backflips like some wild little kid with no fear.
Whenever I wanted coconut juice or coconut meat, I didn’t need money. I just walked to the farm, climbed a tree, and picked one. Bananas, rice, corn, everything was within reach. We had more than enough. We had abundance without even realizing it.
But life moved fast, and before I knew it, everything started to change.
After high school, I left home to study in Manila. And then, sometime around 1999, I heard the news: my grandfather sold the entire farmland to our neighbor…for almost nothing. For peanuts. Something that held generations of memories, something priceless to me, was gone just like that.
To this day, it still hurts. That land raised me. I spent my childhood running through the rice fields, watching birds, feeling the cool breeze, carrying a slingshot in my pocket, trying not to fall into the water as I balanced on the soft and hard paths. That place shaped me. It was my playground, my classroom, my home.
How I wish I could go back to those days, even just for a minute.
Now I’m 44 and all I dream about almost every day is to buy that land back. I don’t even know how much it costs anymore. It was sold for around $2,500 back then, a number that feels like an insult now.
Today, food is expensive. Everything has a price tag even the things that used to feel free. You can’t even climb someone else’s coconut tree without paying first.
Back then, we could do that without anyone minding.
Crops cost more than ever. Everyone buys everything and complains about the prices. The life we once had, the life where food came from our own hands, is gone.
I want to reclaim what was lost. Not just the land, but the life, the peace, the meaning that came with it.
Even the logo of Authenticrypt carries that story.
It’s a fusion of A and C, but it’s more than letters. When you look at it closely, it carries the outline of a rice grain.
The logo is my childhood, my farmland, my six-year-old self planting rice. It’s the symbol of everything we lost and everything I’m trying to rebuild. It’s the story of my life pressed into a single shape.
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