About Haight's Place
Our story
If you were on a time machine, imagine yourself in the year 1898 just after World War I following the Spanish Era. At this time meet the American US army troop, Mr. Franklin Guy Haight who was a member of the Engineering Corps that looked after the building of the Benguet road, the first access road from Manila to the Cordilleras.
After a year of hard work, Franklin fell sick and acquired early stage of Tuberculosis. He was recommended by the doctor to find for a place similar to the climate of his hometown in Philadelphia. Philadelphia weather could be off and extremes with very warm and humid summer and winters at very low temperatures. A friend only known and named as Mr. Brown advised a particular place in the Cordilleras which is similar to his homeland.
And off he went, together with his Igorot “tent boy”, Celo, whom was later adopted by Franklin as his son, travelled approximately 50 kilometres of Baguio City, further north towards the highlands and made it to a municipality, now called Paoay in Atok, Benguet.
The pair reached a grassland in top of a plateau 7, 9337 above sea level, the region was surrounded by moss-covered woodlands with lots of pine trees. They were greeted by the place with clean, fresh, cold air. From, here, he found the place the doctor has advised him to settle. With the care provided by Celo, Franklin has recovered well from his respiratory ailment.
Having recuperated well, Franklin have foreseen the area’s soil potential as a vegetable farm. He the ordered vegetable seeds from Philadelphia through his parents help and started to sow these seeds. He has planted cabbage, turnip, rhubarb, sugar beets, carrots, parsley, celery and potato with the assistance of the Igorot farmers. He has produced the best potatoes and cabbages from the region during that time. He transports the produce from Atok to Baguio an average of 30Kg by foot with his hired porters and horse. He eventually grew his crops and added oats and rye, whose stalks and leaves were used as food by the livestock farm and animals. Most of his produce he sold in Baguio to his fellow American mostly the Army officials holidaying in Camp John Hay.
As time pass by during his exploits to look for better place of farming in the neighbouring municipalities of Loo, Bugias; Kabayan and Suyoc, Mankayan, he has met a local Igorot girl Susie Lopez. Susie is from Dituan, Mankayan, Benguet. They eventually married returned to Paoay and brought up five children. They were called Celo, Tom, John, Margaret and William, where at the same time hey continued to manage their farm.
In their approximately 30 hectare farm, Franklin and Susie erected a farmstead. It was a grass-bounded abode. Additional log cabins were constructed that served as Inns and health resort. And was called “Haight’s Place” at that time.
Then the Wold War II came along, Grandpa Franklin passed away leaving Grandma Susie and the kids. The war destroyed most of the structures built by the Haight family, but the main house stood strong and resistant. This has served numerous family gatherings, witnessing the most wonderful amazing and remarkable events of the Haight family along with their friends. The tradition of keeping family gatherings in the house continued for generations that kept their close family ties.
How the Sakura Farm came to be
As generations come and go, the virtue of traveling overseas, it gave the members of the family the virtue of developing part of the land as a Sakura farm being it the same climate as in Japan.
And opportunity came when Japanese Kochi together with the provincial tourism board/government were looking for an area where they can propagate the Sakura plant to serve as a symbol of the 40th anniversary of the Benguet – Kochi sisterhood. After conducting some surveys and sol tests, Paoay emerged to be the most appropriate place where the trees will grow considering the soil and the climate. The Haight family did have the space to lease so the government and the Japanese counter parts approached the Haight’s and made it all formal that the project will not jut serve the municipality of Atok but the Province of Benguet.