The Rural Voice, 1992-04, Page 45occasionally pineapples. Callaloo
and dasheen are both from the same
plant, callaloo being the leaves, it is
prepared similar to spinach; dasheen
is the root, a starchy vegetable.
Yams and sweet potatoes are other
starchy root vegetables. Pigeon peas
grow on a largish bush. They are
cooked with rice, to make the
Grenadian staple dish. There are
seasoning peppers that will clear your
sinuses, and sweet corn that can be
purchased on the street, roasted over
a coal pot. It makes a chewy snack.
In a country where fences are
virtually unknown, sheep, goats, and
cattle are commonly tethered along
roadsides. Sheep are the most
numerous. Dairy cattle non-existent.
And only a few goats. There are a
few decent looking pigs. The scope
of the traditional livestock enterprise
can best be judged by an example: a
farmer, in his 60s, was shifting
several cattle to a fresh tethering spot
one day; he stopped me to find out
who the heck I was, and what was a
white man doing up in these hills
anyway? During the conversation, he
proudly explained that his father had
given him a cow when he was in his
teens; he had sold enough over the
years to provide for his family and
now he had a herd of fifteen cattle.
This appeared to be a larger than
average enterprise.
The banana plant looks like a
small tree, but it is a large herbaceous
plant. Because of cross breeding,
commercial banana varieties are
virtually sterile and they are
reproduced vegetatively. It takes
three years for a stalk to mature and
produce fruit. Then it is cut down.
Meanwhile, a second shoot has been
nurtured ready to fruit the following
year and a third smaller bud has
started to replace the second one.
Banana plants are subject to fungus
attacks. It takes a constant battle with
fungicides and breeding programs to
try to keep ahead of these disease
organisms. Peter Hunt, a British
agronomist who has been working in
Grenada with the banana crop for five
years, is concerned about a new
fungus organism that is spreading
south from Cuba, he worries, "can we
keep ahead?"
When they reach the proper stage
Merle Gunby has recently returned
to Canada after spending a year in
Grenada. Ile tells about farming in
Grenada in the first of a series of
articles on farming in other lands by
local farmers who have travelled
abroad.
of maturity, the stalks of bananas are
taken to local packing and grading
stations where the "hands" are
removed from the stalk and packed in
cardboard containers and transported
to the docks in St George's ready for
the Geest banana boat that calls every
other Tuesday.
Cocoa grows on a smallish tree
that likes well -drained hillsides with
a little shade from larger trees. The
colourful pods are harvested by the
farmer and the wet beans inside are
saved and taken to a processing
station. Here they are put into bins or
tanks to ferment for four days. They
have to be stirred every day; this is
usually accomplished by moving
them to a different bin each day.
Next the beans are dried by spreading
them on large trays, maybe 10 by 14
feet, that are arranged on rollers so
they can be moved out into the sun or
rolled back under cover in case of
rain. The beans must be stirred often
during this process to promote even
drying and prevent mould. This is
accomplished by women who shuffle
through the bcans back and forth,
both lengthwise and crosswise.
When the cocoa beans are
thoroughly dry, they are placed in a
round bin where a mechanical stirrer
polishes them. Then they are graded
and bagged to be shipped out of the
country for final processing. I'm told
that Grenadian cocoa, because of the
unique combination of soil and
climate, it a high quality product and
is purchased by processors to blend
with inferior cocoa from other areas.
Grenadians promote their land as
the Isle of Spice. Of the many spice
producing plants that grow here, the
Nutmeg tree is the most well known.
It is a medium to large tree with a
dense crown of small shiny leaves.
The fruit hangs like extra large
yellow plums. As each fruit matures,
it splits open revealing the "nut"
covered with what looks like a red
plastic net. This "net" is the spice we
know as Mace. The nuts with their
mace covering fall to the ground
where they are gathered and taken to
a nutmeg processing station. Here
the mace is stripped from the nuts
and both are placed in drying racks
and left to "season." Eventually, the
nutmegs are cracked, graded and
bagged for export.
Indonesia produces 75 per cent of
the world's nutmegs and Grenada the
other 25 per cent. The marketing
arrangement between the two
countries broke down recently and as
a result, the nutmeg market is
severely depressed. What once was a
modestly lucrative crop, for farmers
and the nation, is now virtually
unsalable. Warehouses arc stacked
up to the roof with nutmegs. There
are even threats from the nutmeg
board to bum them. A new factory to
extract nutmeg oil is being
constructed with the hope that this
might be a way to market at least
some of their crop.
So what is one Canadian farmer's
impression after nearly a year in a
tropical environment? One, the raw
winds and mud of an Ontario March
are even less appealing than I rem-
ember them. And North American
excesses seem even more excessive.
People individually wherever you
meet them are friendly and helpful.
The joys, problems, and topics of
discussion are remarkably familiar
even though the context is exotic.
But I don't think I will even try to
harvest that 40 acres of corn with a
cutlass.0
APRIL 1992 41