IN the tiny village of Busilac at the capital town of Bayombong in Nueva Vizcaya, when one thinks of homemade fruit preserves, Cottage Fresh comes to mind.
Cottage Fresh is the local brand for a line of home-processed fruit preserves developed by couples Josias Tiburcio Jr. and wife Perlita (née Costales).
With her natural skills in food technology, Perlita started fruit processing as a mere hobby for family and friends. At the start, she sought to maximize the products she could produce from backyard-grown fruits.
“Nueva Vizcaya is said to be the ‘Citrus Capital of the Philippines,’ a reputation that adds value to every citrus-based product we process,” Perlita said.
Starting with santol fruit, she made barrels of vinegar out of the peelings, pickles from the flesh, and jellies from the pulps covering the seeds. The concept of zero-waste processing was born for the Tiburcios.
“At that time, product development was all by trial and error,” she confessed.
She then realized that food processing was beyond knowing the recipes. Looking forward to enhance her knowledge and skills, she enrolled at the College of Home Economics of the University of the Philippines in Diliman. It was providential that among her mentors were the experts in food science, like Dr. Estrella Alabastro, who landed as secretary of the Department of Science and Technology.
Seeing the potentials, Froilan Calata, an uncle of Josias who was a retired Philippine National Bank branch manager, proposed that, together, they raise an amount as capital for a cottage-based micro food-processing business following the technology developed by Perlita. At the stroke of a pen, Rite Foods and its Cottage Fresh brand were born.
The establishment of a small fruit-processing enterprise in their backyard created employment opportunities for both women and youngsters in the village. The new venture supported the sustainability of roadside pasalubong stands along the stretch of the Maharlika Highway from Bayombong to Dalton Pass in Santa Fe town down south, the gateway to Cagayan Valley.
“We started with a semicommercial-scale processing of pineapples into jams and vinegars. When it was the season for mangoes, we processed them into pickles,” Josias said.
They marketed mango pickles through the roadside pasalubong stands, which were growing like mushrooms in the village. The couples’ mango pickles became an instant hit.
Then came the season for santol, which were also processed into pickles. The large amount of mixed santol and guavas juices were processed into jelly.
Then it was the season for littuco (rattan fruits) which they processed into preserves.
By developing new processed-fruit products acceptable to the market, the man-and-wife tandem promoted planting of more fruit trees, especially mangoes and santol. The two also encouraged the planting of littuco palms on hillside farms in the village.
When the local representative of the Bureau of Food and Drug inspected their project, they passed with flying colors. To this day, they produce mango and santol pickles, littuco preserves and, occasionally, jams and jellies. They have also developed and produce yacon pickles. They no longer sell their vinegar. Instead, they use them for their pickles.
Developing a mixture of bignay, littuco and grape wines, they also developed what they dubbed as Vino Nuevo Guignolet, which also became a big hit.
One early evening, a young wife came to their house to buy a box of Guignolet. Curious, Josias asked the walk-in visitor how she came to know about the product. She told the story of a motorist who dropped by the Nueva Vizcaya Pasalubong Center and bought Guignolet.
Apparently, the motorist was a staff member of President George W. Bush who brought the wine to the United States. When President Bush threw a party for his staff, he presented the Guignolet to the president.
“A product from the Philippines,” he said. The president tasted it and found it good. Another Filipino staff member, apparently a Novo Vizcayano, was curious and read the label.
“This is from my home province!” he exclaimed.
The couple’s active product development resulted in a number of processed-fruit products, which paved the way for Perlita’s numerous awards, like Gawad Saka, Outstanding High-Value Commercial Crop Processor, DTI Outstanding Entrepinoy Award and Sipag at Tiyaga Award.
As a professor at the Nueva Vizcaya State University, Perlita shares the technologies she developed to her students, as well as to other clienteles of the university. She scales up production in her laboratory classes and sells the products through the university’s Marketing Center.
She used the returns to support her students who cannot afford to buy their own raw materials for processing.
“I realized that food processing could provide support not only to my students but also to farming families, especially rural women and out-of-school youth,” she said.
As part of her college’s extension program, she has conducted numerous trainings in food processing, from the hinterlands of Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, to as far as Ifugao State University, Batanes State College and the Bataan Center for Innovative Science and Technology in Morong town.
The Didipio Community Development Corp. (Dicorp), which feeds about 2,000 OceanaGold (Philippines) mining employees daily from breakfast to dinner, has tapped Perlita to train food handlers at the Didipio gold-copper project site in the upland village.
“The Didipio Mine is an impressive example of world-class massive workforce that needs to be fed with the right meal three times a day and with distance from down town, food processing appropriately steps in,” Perlita said.
She has also been commissioned by the different Municipal Agricultural Offices in Nueva Vizcaya, the Provincial Agricultural Office and the provincial offices of the departments of Trade and Industry, Tourism and the Science and Technology.
“My laboratory, where I developed my technologies, is at home and the university. My students benefit from my technologies for free,” Perlita said.
Image credits: Leonardo Perante II