As a wanna-be farmer, I’m learning a lot about pastures this month. I’m learning that if you are raising cattle, which we hope to be doing soon for income, you have to have a specific type of grass, and that grass has to grow without trees in the way.
Remember all those guavas we reaped earlier in the year for guava jam and juice? Well, I never understood how we got all these trees everywhere on the property – probably over 150 trees! Then a senior experienced Jamaican farmer Mr. Robin showed up to help us get our pastures ready for cattle and shared some info about those trees.
Even though I’m a 4H-er, I must have missed this fact in the cattle raising class. Cattle love guavas just like I do, but when they eat all those sweet fruits, they leave the seeds everywhere on the farm in the form of cow pies…. and those cow pies produce random guava trees all over the pastures. There you have it – how much more organic can you get?
Now we are cutting out the guavas as they have finished bearing, and we are making room for the African Star Grass which is already there and beginning to grow. If you have some farm stories you’d like to share, please do so, as we will share them in a future newsletter in our Family on the Farm article. We will keep sending you more info on our own farming experiences as we learn and grow with our Jamaican families.
TRIP COST
There is an old proverb, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.” History proves that lasting change in a poverty culture is achieved by empowering the people to reach their full potential and become self-sustaining. ACE is invested in our community long-term and in conjunction with our partners in the US, we are identifying the circumstances of those around us in order to find real solutions for their unique needs.