A city girl takes to the country: Giving back and loving it

In the early 70s, she worked in a business dominated by males.

“Looking back,   I think I was the only female executive at that time involved in freight forwarding,” said Grace A. Yap, the prime mover of Building Circle Freight International.

Putting up the company from the ground up was not easy.

Yap joined the highly competitive world of the forwarding business with a handful of employees. As its  president and first country manager, she saw the firm grow not only in the Philippines but also in Southeast Asia, until another multinational company took notice and bought it from her with one condition—that she stay on.

The job saw her shuttling to different countries before she decided to settle in the United States. In 2009, she thought she was ripe for retirement.

But even before her much anticipated retirement, competitors not only in the US but in Asia were already sending out feelers, asking her whether she would be interested in adding a few more years to her corporate life and with that,  getting a more than generous employment package.

With a firm “No, thank you,” Yap packed her bags and returned to the Philippines.

Not used to be being a lady of leisure, and hardly settled, she was already off to a new venture.

“Though the feeling of being out of the rat race was quite exhilarating initially, it can be boring after sometime. I wanted to be productive not only for myself but for others,” she said.

Once, while driving around Laguna province, she and her former colleagues, all retirees like her, saw a “For Sale” sign posted outside a poultry farm in Pila. Reading each other’s minds, the friends decided to pool their resources and bought the farm.

Cleanup

Cleaning up was the first order of the day. The dilapidated property  was unattended for six years and much had to be done.

Back to doing what she did best, Yap came up with systems and procedures to make the property work not only  for their new company, Graco Farms and Leisure Inc. but also for the community around them.

Backed by 37 years of business experience here and abroad, Yap embraced a full time farmer’s job with the same zeal and passion she showed in the freight business. “One is never too old to learn new things,” she said.

Venturing into livestock production, specifically goat-raising and breeding ducks and chickens, the group attended seminars all the way to Central Luzon State University in Nueva Ecija province,  to consulting farm experts and asking UP Los Baños teachers to come up with a six module  package on goat-raising and cheese production. There were also visits to Cotabato and Davao provinces to look for quality goat breeds.

Yap admitted that both the freight forwarding business and farming entail hard work and high risks.

Operations

“In the freight business, you can control a few things, like scheduling the delivery of goods, but in farming, you have to contend with the weather and the health of your stocks. One day, a goat appears to be very healthy, and then all of a sudden, the same goat will catch a virus and is dead the following day. That’s why we have to study all these and know why they happen,” Yap said.

The farm has a mini lab complete with the latest equipment to study diseases affecting livestock.

Used to big operations, with many employees tasked to do specific tasks, Yap and her farm manager, Eric Macaisa hired only  four men doing various jobs.

“These guys are multi-taskers  working on a five-hectare property. They are taught the latest technology which they can share with their families and neighbors who are also farmers.” she said.

Yap is quite emphatic about what she demands from her co-workers—that  they should be animal lovers first and foremost, and should have “malasakit” (concern). ”

“They realize that they will be the first beneficiaries once the venture becomes a success. Their children will not be just tillers of the land but can be somebody else they want to be in the future,” she said.

Expansion

Today, Graco Farms has grown into two buildings housing Anglo Nubian and Saanen goats, for milk to be made into cheese and cosmetic products.

A stream inside the property provides clean water for  ducks bred for the production of salted eggs.  There are Peking ducks, too,  free range chickens—Sasso and the Chinese or silky chicken, turkeys and an ostrich.

Two ponds teem with  tilapia fingerlings; around the farm are pockets of herb gardens and small vegetable patches.

“We also intend to put up cottages for those who would prefer to spend their weekends on the farm away from the noise and pollution of city life,” Yap said.

And as if that were not enough, she manages to squeeze in French classes at Alliance Francaise in Makati City. She is also frequently invited as a speaker at various fora devoted to helping entrepreneurs and managers.

Yap also finds time to help Pila, known for its heritage homes and antiques, in its efforts to attract visitors.

With Mayor Egay Ramos and Cora Relova of the Pila Historical Society and one of its  leading citizens, Yap is in the thick of plans  for a sustainable tourism development program to promote the town.

As this transplanted Metro Manilan said of her adopted town: “Pila is a place worth visiting not just for its old houses but also because of  its wonderful people.”