Sagada countryside
Walking around the countryside in Sagada is a pleasant way to spend the day. If you use common sense and walk on the trails and the thicker paddy dikes there will be no problem because the people that live in this area are used to tourists passing through.
The terrain is not very rugged like around Banaue and Tinglayan so it can be an easy walk and you can cover a lot of territory.
Most of the rice planting is done in February around Sagada. There are many cabbage and bean fields and you find potatoes and tomatoes now and then.
There are some some citrus trees introduced from Spain years ago but coconut trees are rare in Sagada because of the elevation. The few you do see are not good producers. Pine trees and coffee trees also grow in the hills.
The cabbage farmers were spraying the fields with pestacides because there are scores of white butterflies laying eggs on their crops. They tell me if they don’t there will be nothing to bring to market.
I am told a relatively new type of diamond back moth or butterfly has invaded the Sagada area that is particularly vicious. The larve bore into the center of the cabbage heads and completely destroy the plant. Some of them even hint that they think the chemical companies have introduced these bugs so they can sell more pesticide.
It doesn’t seem likely but who knows. In the 1980’s a new type of snail was introduced through some program that was supposed to provide a new food source but instead these snails attacked the rice seedlings and have displaced the indigenous snails.
In the old days farmers would have a mesh bag where they would collect snails from the fields as they worked and bring them home for dinner for the kids. One guy told me that that was the highlight of the day when his father would return home from the fields with a bag full of them.
The brightly colored snail eggs show up all through the fields but are not yet found in the Tinglayan fields or in Malagkong. The mountain people there are proud that there are no pesticides used in the fields of Tinglayan yet.
There are so many ceremonies and traditions in Sagada that it would take years to study them and get a understanding of why they do things the way they do. Everything has a time and a purpose and the old animist religions are still strong in this area.
Philippines