In 1989 we planted 3000 coffee trees, spacing them according to the government’s instructions, only to find out that they were too close together and we had to remove about 700 trees.
In 1990 Hurricane Hugo flattened our crop, but they were so young that we could stake them up and they were fine.
In 1999 we removed more trees to build our guesthouse, but we maintained two major areas devoted to coffee.
We enjoy being farmers. We are city folk transplanted in the country, learning by trial and error…Green Acres revisited. We followed the coffee process from start to finish. We picked, skinned, dried, shelled and roasted our beans, although usually we picked the coffee and sold it “uva” to the local cooperative which would then sell it to the various processors. We’d gather a crew together during harvest and pick coffee from early morning until we could load the sacks in the pick up and take them off to some remote location to sell. We were coffee farmers and although we never made much money, our hearts were in it.
Now it’s twenty years later; our coffees are old and so are we. Broca, a world wide coffee plague has come to our area, diminishing the quality and price of coffee and requiring more attention and money. So it’s time to rethink our coffee. Just as we’re approaching a new age in our lives, so must our farm.
There’s no such thing as fallow land here. The jungle has its own life and takes over all in its path. Our cottages would soon disappear, covered by vines of ñame if we were to leave things alone. And so we’re thinking…without investing a lot of money we’re trying to come up with a plan for the future. I’ve heard that the government has reforestation programs, encouraging people to plant trees and leave them for ten years, but it involves government loans and lots of paperwork.
We’ve come up with a preliminary plan. In the past year or so we’ve interspersed some plantains in our coffee plantation. We also have various kinds of citrus trees ready to plant. I even have a fig tree started in a pot. We have a row of asparagus and a row of papayas planted among the coffee. So I think we’re going to continue our various plantings… label them so that our guest can walk around and see….space them so that we can cut the grass with the mower or the tractor and perhaps at some point the trees would provide some shade that would inhibit undergrowth.
So that’s our idea…keep some coffee for “show and tell” but try converting the area to a variety of trees…maybe some ‘exotics’ (vanilla? Venus fly traps???) so that we can maintain our groves, eat from the trees and wander through paradise. Anyone want to trade some bulldozer time for a couple of nights in Eden?
4 comments:
Sounds like an excellent plan. I think there's added value for your guests.
There is so much that people don't know. They could benefit from such exposures and who knows, when your guest returns home, they might just start up a little garden of their own.
I have a neighbor who grows quite a bit of vegetables during the summer and they also have a fig tree which they harvest twice a year.
Maybe you can have workshop teaching people how to can and preserve their harvest.
If I had land I would try to do that too. The best food is the freshest home grown ones. I guess that's why the farmers market are doing so well.
People are getting tired of coated vegetables and the high cost of them. That why more and more centralized gardens are popping up in urban communities.
Some have taken to raising chickens and enjoying fresh eggs while others are also raising goats for the fresh milk.
People want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. And power to them.
You might check with UPR Mayaguez and the experimental station near Isabella, or with some of the rare fruit folks in and around Maricao, to get more variety.
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