From the perspective of the city, the countryside often feels like a foreign country, a network of colonial outposts long conquered and emptied of culture, reduced to either bare life or, as Marx once famously put it, a constant state of idiocy. A surprising exception is Manang Letty’s farm in Pangasinan.

Fed by the waters of the San Roque Dam, the 6-hectare farm has expansive rice fields and a small herd of 15 carabaos of native Indian and Italian stock that produce milk and kesong puti sold every Sunday at the Legazpi farmer’s market. Birds of paradise and bromeliads grow wild on the edges of the fields and around a fishpond full of tilapia, while ylang-ylang, jasmine, and other flowers fill the air with their sweet fragrance.

Contemplating the emerald landscape from the deck of her house as birds and butterflies flit by, one encounters a version of the pastoral: the sense of nature tamed to yield its bounty to the will of those who claim and cultivate it. Narra and mango trees grow side by side with cacao and bananas, fish and livestock submit to human demands, while workers and animals carry out the plans and commands of the owner. The pastoral vision of nature made benevolent by the philanthropy of its owner is ironically enabled by its rational and systematic conquest.

Indeed, Manang Letty shifts from extolling the serenity of farm life to a litany of worries about untrustworthy workers, invasive plants, inefficient bureaucrats, and shifty neighbors with little regard for private property. Farming is hard work, as unforgiving as it is unending, so that it often feels like war. One negotiates with one’s surroundings, adapting to the soil, the weather, and the recalcitrant working habits of caretakers and local farmers. At the same time, one lays siege to what exists, appropriating what seems useful while pushing back what gets in the way. Agriculture, after all, is the enforced domestication of nature, even as its victories remain vulnerable to periodic catastrophes of all kinds.