Tam Pho, the middle-aged farmer who has become famous on social networks recently, has a calm voice and suntanned face.

He says his real name is Tran Van Pho. He was born in 1962 in Hoa Binh Thanh commune in Chau Thanh district into a farmer family. He is the seventh child in his family, so he is called Tam Pho.

Tam Pho married a local woman and received a high number of cong (1 cong = 1,000 sq m) fields from his parents. With a passion for agriculture and eagerness to get rich, they worked hard on the rice fields every day and became well off.

Instead of hoarding money in his coffers, he bought agricultural machinery and provided services to local farmers, and earned quite a lot of money.

When his business began to have big assets, Tam Pho came up with an idea that confounded local farmers and relatives.

“I believe that life is just a ‘temporary realm’, and people’s money, assets and fame will vanish into thin air. I decided to become a vegetarian and travel everywhere to find medicinal herbs, dry the herbs, and give them to local herbalists who can help cure poor people. As I cannot drive a motorbike, I carry the herbs with ox carts,” he said.

He spent a lot of time visiting every corner to seek medicinal herbs, and was willing to work under the sun and rain for tens of kilometers to obtain what he wanted.

After eight years raising cattle, he felt sympathy towards the cows and buffaloes that work hard to help farmers in their fieldwork. So he decided to leave 40,000 sqm of fields for the children to cultivate rice to earn their living. He then built barns on 7,000 sqm and grew grass on the remaining 5,000 sqm to rescue cows and buffalos.

“Previously, I didn’t have agricultural machinery and only cows and buffaloes helped me. And now is the time for me to repay then for their favour,” he said.

“I often go to the slaughterhouses in the city, in Nui Sap and Tinh Bien, to buy cows and buffaloes, thus saving them from being killed,” he said.

Tam Pho is sorry that he cannot rescue all the cattle. He can only save the cows and buffaloes he was fated to save, he said. 

“Local people say I am crazy, which makes me feel sad. But I always say to myself that I have to try my best and rescue as many cows and buffaloes as possible. This is the wish of all my life,” the farmer said.

Pointing to a cow grazing by a canal, Tam Pho said it was one of two cows he had saved from slaughterhouses. The cow is now nearly 40 years old. At the time he bought the two cows, they cost three taels of gold.

When the cows were young, they were strong with long horns. One of them died in November 2023, while the other cow gave up eating and is weak.

“I buried the dead cow in a place near the farm. There is a stone stele with information about the death day. I grow flowers next to the cow’s grave,” he said.

Another grave of a cow is nearby. He said he bought the cow two years ago. "But on the day I brought it home, it gave up eating and cried all the time as it missed its mother."

“Just after half a month, it left me,” he said.

Tam Pho’s farm now has 17 cows and five buffaloes he has rescued from slaughterhouses.

Tran Xuyen