Cloth separators or dividers are placed in between sheets while stacking them before draining and pressing.

Little known is this place outside its territory, familiar only to the locals and the few who have visited and strayed to the place. Getting down the vehicle and touching ground gave me a whiff of humid air. Humid and heavy but clear, and the wind does blow here.

       Labueg is an upland compared to some of the barangays located down and nearer to the municipal center in Lomon. we took that route from the Municipal Hall to the police station uphill, passing by the old elementary and high school. All else are dots of houses here and there in between farms and forested grounds. From atop the bus I could see the “eternity” of Kapangan on this side. Typical of rural landscapes, cows and carabaos were part of the denizens of the place.

       Bus stopped beside a waiting shed on a Y-intersection road. The upper path leads to the Anthurium Forrest, a 1.8 hectare space planted with all sorts and varieties of the flower. Sown there almost 40 years ago by the late Mr. Burcio, an agriculturist who was given the chance to propagate them. In his lifetime he has interbred and propagated 13 new varieties, all of which were named after his children. A vast awesomeness of flowers that dots the valley with blossoms comes the season of bloom.

       On the other path going downhill is another man. One who came from a faraway land with a story of his own. He is Japanese but his heart is now rooted in Poking, Labueg. Asao Shimura is his name,  took a wife (Andrea) who is honestly from this place, had kids and grandchildren. Some consider this man queer for some reasons, maybe because even with the excellent brain he is as simple as most of the farm residents. He has queer ideas maybe, but these ideas to me are manifestations of his advocacy to nature. To use what is natural and available. To indoctrinate and tutor people to make a livelihood out of the resources around and at the same time lessening the toxic impurities of modern and massive productions. The simplicity of the lifestyle would have made some city people give up after awhile, but Shimura stayed. A roof over the head, a few clothes on one’s back, abundant food on the table and honest to goodness friends to compliment the family.

       Shimura’s wife’s nephew Ricky L. Belino took me around the house for a demonstration of the paper making business, cautioning me to be careful about touching the gray concrete walls for reasons I did not understand…yet. He works for Shimura and alongside him has perfected the art of papermaking. Inside they showed me a profusion of papers in different textures and hues. And some samples of certificates and cards and special documents created out of those papers. Being an artist in my own rights, my eyes again grew as big as saucers at the samples laid out before me. The beautiful ingenuity of materials crafted by hand and cured by nature without chemicals or big machines. A product of intense manual labor that beats the quality of other big productions.    

       The raw materials are plants beaten to pulp mixed with other plant agents to make them even as sheets and another to make the pulp mix stick together. The plant fibers that has been tried and tested here are pina, banana, rice straws, and all sorts of fibers found around the neighborhood. The fibers are first cooked slowly in a span of 2 hours. That would beat out the rawness of the fibers to prevent them from spoiling in the long run, then the fibers are transferred to a large elongated metal tub to beat them to pulp. After, these are all mixed and stirred nicely with a lot of water in another container, in this case the concrete oversized lavatory-like tub constructed especially for the purpose. For as much a proportional amount of “tororo-aoi” liquid is poured in. This is a sticky sap-like agent extracted from the “tororo-aoi” plant. In some areas in Japan, the tororo-aoi is called nebishi. It is a slimey substance extracted from the roots of the plant and is widely used in most paper mills in Japan using the technique “nagashizuki”. Though the plant is rare nowadays, most mills have taken to growing their own tororo-aoi. In such case, Shimura has a few planted in his yard in Poking also.

       When the mixing is thorough enough, a bit of the mixture is poured into the mold much like those being used in silk screening, a bit at a time to control the thickness and the water is drained. Cloths are used to separate the wet sheets and divide them, so not to stick together when stacked ready for pressing. After about 5 minutes under the stress of the press and much of the liquid dried out, the stacks are taken out, separated and “plastered” on the wall for sun drying. In my inattentiveness and ignorance right after arriving here, I was not keen to notice that the walls were plastered with “sheets” of paper. Almost unnoticeable while wet but as it dries now I see the patterns and the transparent hues of what would soon be “organically produced papers”.

NOTE: For those wanting to inquire about this article and the producer, kindly get in touch with the author. This is one of kapangan’s pride.