F is for farming

F is for farming

Just a little note before the farming, to send an enormous transatlantic hug to the best f&f in the world: mine! And yes, this does include some people that are not in the video but are in my heart nevertheless. Loved it and can't wait to get it on a DVD so that I can watch it in loop!

Watching DVDs is certainly not my main pastime, so I've found something else to entertain me: my backyard.

My biggest surprise when I got here was finding out that I was in a place with tropical climate and no fruit. Those who know me can imagine how dramatic this is: I'm the girl that has two bowls of fruit in her kitchen and takes apples to discos. Well, complaining and nagging is not my thing, so I decided to ask around why people were not planting fruit and vegetables; I wondered why on Earth we had to bring things in from Georgetown, on an extremely bumpy 8 hour minibus journey. People laughed at me and said the soil was no good. Naïf, I believed them! Until the day I walked passed an amazing garden/farm and started chatting to the owner, Mr Young. He has anything you can think of growing in his garden and said that what you really need is to bring in a lot of cow manure. Hands on then!

I borrowed a big bucket, called another gyal I know was interested in growing veggies and fruit and off we went collecting buckets of shite. Some guys were watching from the guesthouse's balcony and took pictures of us. How sweet, ha?

Meanwhile I've created an artificial mountain to plant pawpaw on it (above photo), so that the roots don't rot. This morning, a neighbour of mine, who had lent me a rack, said he'd passed by my house and saw no plants, so I told him I was still looking for seeds. At lunch time he was knocking on the door to bring me lots of seeds. Very exciting! So, as soon as I left the office today I collected more manure (because he said I needed more…shucks!) and buried the seeds in shit.

Looks good... does it?!

Smelly beginning for a hopefully tasty ending!