SOGOD, Southern Leyte-When 44-year-old Benjamin Gerona Jr. started his 4.5-hectare farm in a village here, he considered it as just his way of having fun.

But the farm, which he calls La Caridad Farm after his mother who is now living in Alaska with one of his sisters, also earns for him about P200,000 from its two-hectare rice fields and from produce from the fishpond.

Jun, as Gerona is called by relatives and friends, also has an ecotourism project underway, which transforms his farm from a mere food basket into beautifully landscaped place where people can enjoy and relax.

The La Caridad Farm could be reached through a 1.5-kilometer rural road from the Sogod-Liloan road section of the national highway. Colorful flags decorate the place that includes a rice field, fishponds, vegetable gardens, flowering and ornamental plants. The farm also has some animals, such as a young eagle, two rabbits, a wild cat, a pair of grass owls, a heron, a dove and some chickens.

Jun says his main concern is the planting of rice because it does not only provide food for the family but also gives them sufficient income. In the last two years alone, his two-hectare rice land had provided him an average income of about P99,000 per year.

But his fishponds, which contain tilapia, aquarium fish and giant freshwater prawns, also bring in money. In 2007 alone, Jun was able to sell tilapia, hito and aquarium fish worth more than P108,000.

The farm also has vegetables grown in plastic bags or containers that are placed on a platform attached to the legs of the trellis. The trellis covers most part of the pond, which is filled with freshwater prawns that need a shade from the sun for them to survive.

Some vegetables like okra, eggplant and patola are planted on some of the dikes to make use of the space.

The flowering and ornamental plants are grown in landscaped areas, adding color to the place. Most of the animals are in cages that are directly above a pond, allowing their waste to freely drop and become fertilizers.

Jun's wife Beth manages the entertainment house, a two-story nipa hut located at the middle of a pond. Here the guests could sing using a videoke or simply enjoy the view of the landscaped gardens, vegetable garden and the rice fields.

In the hut, visitors could fish from the fishpond below that is filled with tilapia and other fishes. Beth charges P200 for a kilo of tilapia caught, P250 a kilo for a red paco, an edible fish.

Already, many people including foreign tourists have visited La Caridad Farm, either for a family reunion, garden wedding or just to see the place. "Our place was even used as among the venues for the Search for Miss Sogod and for the Search for Miss Southern Leyte," Jun says.

The farm's slow transformation into a place attracting both local and foreign visitors provides a pleasant surprise for Jun, who completed his Bachelor of Science in Commerce at a college in Maasin City.

At age 22, shortly after graduating from college, Jun married Maria Raineria, a native of Maasin and a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. Although he was already farming then, Jun had decided to have a business of his own to support his family. With a capitalization of P1,200, Jun said he opened a junk shop and started buying scrap iron, bottles and other junk materials in different places in Southern Leyte and personally delivered these by ship to a buyer in Cebu City.

After about six years in the junk shop business, Jun bought a P30,000 chain saw out of his savings. He used the saw to make lumber out of the gemelina trees he had grown in their place.

With a lot of wood at his disposal, Jun decided to shift into a furniture-making business. So, he put up a shop and hired some local furniture makers.

For six years, he was engrossed in his furniture shop until he decided to be a full-time farmer. At the time, he says, he had P380,000 in receivables from his customers in the furniture business. When he got paid, he used the money to buy agricultural lands adjacent to his farm in Barangay Buac Gamay and improvements for the farm.

With the help of a couple of farm hands, he made the fishponds, landscaped some areas in the farm and planted vegetables, among others. Taking care of the farm became his hobby, Jun says.

Jun says he does not mind spending an average of 10 hours a day in his farm because he enjoys what he is doing. "Actually, even when I am in bed I'm still thinking of the things I want to do in this farm," he says.

In the late 1990s, Jun adopted the integrated farming system, which is a farm management method designed to be economically viable, ecologically sound and socially acceptable. He had attended several seminars and training on inland fishery, rice farming and cattle and carabao production. He has been into organic farming and is an active member of the fisherfolk organization, farmers group and irrigators association in their place.

Jun's love for farming paid off.

In 2002, his efforts were recognized by the Leyte State University, which gave Jun the "Ugmad Award" for his "resourcefulness and diligence in attending technology seminars (that) enabled him to establish a diversified farm consisting of fish, livestock, rice crop, fruit and forest trees which provided employment opportunity to people in his community."

In 2006, the Sogod municipal government bestowed on him the "Most Outstanding Farmer Award." Last year, he received from the Department of Agriculture regional office the "2007 Regional Gawad Saka Award," a special citation for his being an outstanding rice farmer under the integrated farming system category.

People who know Jun were not surprised at the awards he received saying that that love of farming apparently flows in his veins. His deceased father Benjamin Sr. was a farmer and had won an outstanding farmer award in the '80s. His mother was at one time the president of the Rural Improvement Club of their village.