Nang Chong Stories : Floating plants

This is called Piu Dieh (floating in the pond) and pig farmers in nang Chong villages depended on them to bulk up the food for pigs.

Most of the village women would roll up their trouser legs and collected the floating plants for their pigs. It was a kind of miracle plant too because they grew fast and when the flood came some would float away when the ponds flooded.

We could even see some of the floating plants on the Rajang.

These water cabbage were free of charge. And many of the Foochow farmers were very thankful in their daily prayers.

In the villages, unlike those farmers nearer Sibu, pig rearers cooked every day hot food for their pigs. They made a special stove near the pig sties out of bricks and mud. Those with more money would even buy a big Cantonese kuali for their pigs. Some just used kerosene tins and perhaps even an open fire.

A good mixture for pig food was collection of left over food like rice and cooked food, and lots of this lettuce. To the hot kuali would be added rice husk and broken rice.

This was the typical food for the pigs before the arrival of manufactured animal feed.

Perhaps that was the reason why pork was so delicious in the past.
this vegetarian diet  which was considered freshly cooked then made our homegrown pigs very lean. There was a thick layer of fat under the skin in those days.

Pistia is a genus of aquatic plant in the arum family, Araceae. The single species it comprises, Pistia stratiotes, is often called water cabbage, water lettuce, Nile cabbage, or shellflower

Today this water lettuce has become an item for house decoration in the urban centres. They look nice in pools of water or large urns.

How time and progress have changed our outlook and our lifestyles.