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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