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A sharing village
published: Saturday | August 18, 2007
Hartley Neita
My father was the son of a farmer who single-handedly operated a property of about 20 acres in Mt. Industry, St. Catherine. Those, of course, were the days when neighbours got together on each other's farms from time to time and gave a day's work ploughing, planting, weeding, reaping and other farming chores.
After work, they sat together late into the night eating, with their wives, and playing dominos, draughts, and from time to time stick-licking with each other. That, in fact, except for the stick-licking, was the genesis of the annual 'put work into Labour Day' programme.
Even though my father subsequently became a teacher, he never lost his love for the land. There was a school garden on the school's property where he taught his male pupils basic elements of agriculture - how to mound the roots of tomatoes and place ashes at the roots of these plants, to remove gormandisers from the stems of the plants, to sow lettuce and cabbage seeds, to mulch, and because our village went through 10 months of drought, how to drip water at the roots of plants to conserve water.
Shelled peas
Heplanted gungo peas along the fence of the yard of our home. It was the job of my younger brother and me to pick the pods just before Christmas and shell the peas. I liked doing this.
I remember it exuded a nice smell. My mother kept a couple of quarts to cook gungo peas soup and rice and gungo. These are two of my favourite food to this day.
We children had the job of taking bags of the rest of the gungo to our neighbours. It was our family's pre-Christmas gift. At other times, we also carried broad beans which grew on vines running along the fences, lettuce and tight heads of cabbage.
My father reared poultry, not the white mass-produced broilers of today. At first they were what was then called common fowl - Dominic, speckle-hen, and peel-neck chickens - and later when the 4-H movement was formed, Leghorn and Rhode Island birds. They did not sleep in coops, but flew into the trees and slept on the branches at nights.
Next morning the rooster, a huge red and black-feathered male, woke them, and us. They fluttered to the ground where the rooster greeted them with a morning peck and then they went and laid their eggs in hidden places. We spent one hour each morning searching for where they laid them.
We fed our poultry with grated coconut meal and corn which was also grown in our backyard. The fowls knew our voices when we called them, "coop-coop" together. Does Mr. Levy do that now?
Once each month, my father selected the heaviest fowl in his brood. He placed it under a basket, head hanging outside, closed his eyes and lopped it off. He grew to know each chicken personally, and he could never eat any of them.
We enjoyed fried, scrambled and boiled eggs every day. The yokes were bright red and healthy looking. Some were left to bake a cake at weekends.
My sister beat the eggs and my brother and I rubbed the sugar, flour and milk. It was family fun. Sometimes a cake was sent to our next-door neighbours.
We, too, enjoyed the generosity of our neighbours and friends. They sent us turnips and carrots, scallion, cabbage and bananas from their backyard farms.
How I miss those days of community togetherness!
published: Saturday | August 18, 2007
Hartley Neita
My father was the son of a farmer who single-handedly operated a property of about 20 acres in Mt. Industry, St. Catherine. Those, of course, were the days when neighbours got together on each other's farms from time to time and gave a day's work ploughing, planting, weeding, reaping and other farming chores.
After work, they sat together late into the night eating, with their wives, and playing dominos, draughts, and from time to time stick-licking with each other. That, in fact, except for the stick-licking, was the genesis of the annual 'put work into Labour Day' programme.
Even though my father subsequently became a teacher, he never lost his love for the land. There was a school garden on the school's property where he taught his male pupils basic elements of agriculture - how to mound the roots of tomatoes and place ashes at the roots of these plants, to remove gormandisers from the stems of the plants, to sow lettuce and cabbage seeds, to mulch, and because our village went through 10 months of drought, how to drip water at the roots of plants to conserve water.
Shelled peas
Heplanted gungo peas along the fence of the yard of our home. It was the job of my younger brother and me to pick the pods just before Christmas and shell the peas. I liked doing this.
I remember it exuded a nice smell. My mother kept a couple of quarts to cook gungo peas soup and rice and gungo. These are two of my favourite food to this day.
We children had the job of taking bags of the rest of the gungo to our neighbours. It was our family's pre-Christmas gift. At other times, we also carried broad beans which grew on vines running along the fences, lettuce and tight heads of cabbage.
My father reared poultry, not the white mass-produced broilers of today. At first they were what was then called common fowl - Dominic, speckle-hen, and peel-neck chickens - and later when the 4-H movement was formed, Leghorn and Rhode Island birds. They did not sleep in coops, but flew into the trees and slept on the branches at nights.
Next morning the rooster, a huge red and black-feathered male, woke them, and us. They fluttered to the ground where the rooster greeted them with a morning peck and then they went and laid their eggs in hidden places. We spent one hour each morning searching for where they laid them.
We fed our poultry with grated coconut meal and corn which was also grown in our backyard. The fowls knew our voices when we called them, "coop-coop" together. Does Mr. Levy do that now?
Once each month, my father selected the heaviest fowl in his brood. He placed it under a basket, head hanging outside, closed his eyes and lopped it off. He grew to know each chicken personally, and he could never eat any of them.
We enjoyed fried, scrambled and boiled eggs every day. The yokes were bright red and healthy looking. Some were left to bake a cake at weekends.
My sister beat the eggs and my brother and I rubbed the sugar, flour and milk. It was family fun. Sometimes a cake was sent to our next-door neighbours.
We, too, enjoyed the generosity of our neighbours and friends. They sent us turnips and carrots, scallion, cabbage and bananas from their backyard farms.
How I miss those days of community togetherness!