Ragged and weary, the students have arrived! Well, they weren't so ragged and most of them proved more resilient than weary. But we've made it through our first day together, getting acclimated to the weather, the culture, and the buses. Tony and I drove down and gave our interns a thrilling wake-me-up ride home, up and down Cemetery Road (how did it get that name?), through a few sheets of rain, and behind a bouncy trash truck, for just a few minutes. Tony is a CFFI Board member and began our day with some local tidbits and crumbs of cocoa knowledge. Tony has stressed a point about agriculture, cocoa in particular, that we should always keep in mind (and I've heard this elsewhere): what may be the saving grace for farmers is the addition of value. Value-added. Cocoa into chocolate. Soursop into soursop juice. Guava into guava jelly. Heck, mangoes into mango peanut butter (that's my idea, don't you dare steal it!). If we can help the farmers not only with tools, transportation, and inputs but also with developing or enabling the addition of value, perhaps we should.

Back at Kim's, we stuffed ourselves with homegrown mangoes, homemade toast (well, homemade bread), homemade chutney, home-fried plantains, and homemade, home-brewed cocoa tea. We felt ourselves well at home, as you can imagine. Mark, a current resident at Kim's place and serious fountain of idiosyncratic knowledge, regaled us with more local tips and bits. You know, stuff you don't find in the guidebooks. Kim is also great for that, and I'm soaking it all up. We wrapped up breakfast and decided to explore the bus system on the island by taking a quick jaunt over to the River Antoine rum distillery - I thought this would be a good start to their internship - and soon enough learned about how to ride the buses and, um, avoid the island rum. "Paint stripper for the mind," Mark calls it. The River Antoine distillery is actually a fascinating operation. Originally built in the 1600s, much of the metalwork is original (I think) and the spent sugarcane is piled all around the building, used for fuel, compost, and lunchbreaks. The fermentation is spontaneous - tastes like some bad homebrew - and occurs after a good boil to concentrate the sugars and flavors. Interesting process, brutal product.

When we returned from our afternoon energizer, Kim was back from a meeting and was working his magic in the kitchen, preparing dinner. He introduced himself with his usual open smile and kept cutting the tomatoes, never missing a beat. And we're thankful we weren't a distraction; that night we dined like bandits after a Whole Foods raid. Vegetarian chili, rice, crisp garden salad, and a mango crumble to put the lights out. The meal was nearly all harvested from his fields. 'Tis but the first night for us, but we won't go hungry, methinks.

So are the students acclimated? Ah, doesn't matter. We're heading into the bush tomorrow, anyway! Kim will show us his lands, give us a couple early-morning hours of work, and then send us off to Diamond. After all, tomorrow is buying day! Commerce! We'll be conducting our first surveys of farmers who bring their beans to the Diamond collection station. Wish us luck. It will be my first buying day and the students' first serious interactions with Grenadians! Sounds funny, but it's true.

Owen

A farmer with "figs," bananas to the layperson

Students and Farmers, Unite!

Cocoa Farming Future Initiative is at it again, chipping away at the layers that separate growers from consumers. In its quest to advocate for and improve the lives of cocoa farmers in Grenada, CFFI is about to welcome its inaugural group of on-the-ground student-interns in a meeting of minds and hands, innovation and experience. For five weeks these students will traverse the island nation to conduct farmer surveys as part of CFFI's greater needs assessment, lend their youthful, agile hands at various farms, develop educational projects with schools to promote agriculture as a meaningful and promising future, break fresh ground to develop a communal compost heap in the northwest, and pursue their own projects of pleasure and progress. We hope this internship program will be the first of many, and we hope you'll follow us as we distill our adventures around the island into a few words each week.

I should introduce myself. I'm Owen and I've been on the Board of CFFI since last summer. I've helped out with a little bit of everything at the organization, but most of my energy has been solitary, in the form of writing grants. I'm pleased as pie (pumpkin, please) to have helped the for-profit cocoa processing facility raise a chunk of money from USAID to procure equipment. (The award is almost official, but not quite. And, if you're not familiar with this project, check out http://www.grenadacocoa.com/ and listen to the radio interview with Larry Burdick.) But the reason I'm here, in Grenada as I write this, is to oversee and be a part of the work of these students. It's time to put those words into action.

How is almost all cocoa dried in Grenada? Solar power! Here a woman turns the cocoa with her feet, allowing all beans to dry evenly.

In the few days I've been here, anticipating the students' arrival on Tuesday, I've met with a few key figures that will help us hit the ground running. Mr. Wayne, a Grenada Cocoa Association (GCA) field agent, a man with a friendly face and knowing eyes, will be showing us fields behind the processing facility where we can get dirty and put our hands to good use. Our work will help this land recover and perhaps make possible a demonstration field for visitors - maybe even a cocoa PYO for the hardcore chocolate tourists! Dr. Buckmire, a former head of the GCA, quick with an idea and a cunning smile to accompany it, will help with our compost efforts and just about anything else; his mind is virtually bursting with ways to keep his body busy. Mr. Hastick, the current head of the GCA, will be a source of information and initiation. He is the grease for our gears.

And what will we do for leisure at the end of each day, you ask? Eat! That's what I'll do. We have a chef de cuisine here as our host. He's (originally) British, but he can cook. Kim Russell, host extraordinaire, has made teryaki chicken with pineapple, potato pancakes, calliloo soup, passionfruit pancakes, and a mango-banana crumble that might've ruined every future crumble for me. Besides eating, there may be the occasional cocoa fermentation experiment or chocolate-making session to pass the time.

All of the students will be contributing to this blog, and they'll all introduce themselves. This is the first of many entries, each no more than a few paragraphs, but rich, we hope, with our impressions of Grenada and of our progress as visitors with a purpose. Keep your eyes open for us and your mouths open for Grenada chocolate.

Owen

Tuesday March 13 9:47AM

It is Tuesday, yes, but I will write about Monday. This morning I am being incredibly lazy and feeling not slightly guilty about it. (I thought John, Doris and I would venture out again to find broomsticks but the plan never materialized. I have decided to write, instead.)

Monday, 12 March, was a slow roller coaster ride throughout the northern half of the island nation. Paula, Doris and I loaded into the white Mazda for a tour of spice producers and farmers, hoping to see a number of people on our list but not knowing where exactly we'd end up. The day was humid, breezy, but just a touch overcast, making the day quite comfortable for New Englanders but perhaps too cold for most Grenadians. The low clouds burned off just for a couple of hours around midday.

Our first stop was Gouyave, the nearest large town south of Victoria, where we peeked into a tourist-friendly nutmeg sorting facility. Women sat silent at stations and picked out bad or broken nutmeg seeds as the continuous rattle of the hard, flavorful little nubbins were emptied from baskets and pasty white tourists shuffled around in their Tevas. (A sign raised above the workers urged them to withhold chatter and thus be blessed by the Lord.) Outside, we talked with an acquaintance of Doris named Jacqueline, who sells nutmeg and other spicy bounty from Grenada to these visitors. Monday was a busy day with many boats and busloads of tourists spilling into Gouyave, so Jacqueline couldn't wrest herself from her livelihood and guide us around the island to see where she sources her goods. Instead, she suggested we take her niece, Samantha, to find a soapmaker named Chariot who lived in nearby Mt. Granby. So into the car again we piled, Samantha as our proxy guide. Uphill, by an Ecumenical (or was it Episcopalian?) church we found Chariot's home but no Chariot. Back to Gouyave we coasted to say goodbye, make plans for tomorrow (today) and set off to our next destination. Later on our trip we would pass a major nutmeg-grinding facility that will grind those seeds sorted at Gouyave.

Sorting nutmeg in Gouyave

Off we rumbled to a nursery at Mirabeau, further inland. Along the way we stopped on a whim at Rosemont farm, drawn in by a colorful and cheerful sign. The driveway led to a handsome house, nicely landscaped and nestled into the mountains. We gave a whoop and a whistle and out came Lewellen Duncan, a genial farmer of 70 years, 54 of those as a farmer, and owner of 7 acres. Among many other flowers and fruits (which he sells at open markets), Lewellen grows cocoa and is a member of the Grenada Cocoa Association. He told us his biggest needs are fertilizer, field cleanup (left over from Hurricane Ivan in 2004), and disease control. If organic fertilizer were more available, Lewellen would be happy to buy it instead of synthetics because he knows it is better for his farm in the long term. And cocoa diseases have been particularly damaging this season due to abnormal amounts of rain. We left Lewellen's picturesque mountainside farm with thanks for his input and a promise to help.

Not to arrive at Mirabeau too hastily (for that wouldn't be the Grenadian way), we picked up a farmer balancing 20 pounds of aromatic nutmeg on his head. His gait was unperturbed by this cranial load but we thought he might appreciate a lift. At 74, Gabriel Francis has 6.5 acres of farmland and is in need of fertilizer. "That is the biggest issue," he states resolutely. He earns more money per pound for cocoa than for nutmeg and his son, Haines, is involved in in the management of the Grenada Cocoa Association.

At last we found ourselves at Mirabeau nursery, which turned out not to be a cocoa nursery of any sort (at least at the moment) but a nursery of many other useful plants. A miniature forest of mango varieties, avocados, nutmeg, some coffee, and various citrus fruits struggle upwards as young plantlets, shaded by a green protective meshwork. Paula noted plenty of space for a compost pile or chicken farm, which, combined with like piles at every nursery, could serve the island's entire cocoa farming community.

So we departed Mirabeau in search of the Carlton fermentary near Grenville, on the east coast. The fermentary is housed in a stately old cement building, trimmed in yellow and shuttered in red. A dump truck was parked at the bay door out front and three young men were unloading 150 lb. bags of dried cocoa from Sateurs to be weighed and recorded. Paula and I walked inside, introduced ourselves, and I was permitted to visit the lower floor where the wet, fresh beans were fermented in large bins and subsequently spread on wheeled drying trays outside. Fermentation was in process, a fact quickly betrayed by its pungent aroma smelling sour and sweet and almost appetizing to a curious visitor but reminiscent of vomit to those who have to smell it every day.

Unloading cocoa at Carlton

A kind man named Nolan found me downstairs and offered to guide me around. We peered into the wooden fermenting bins, or "sweat boxes", roughly 5'x5'x5' and covered by a layer of banana leaves and a layer of jute. The beans ferment for up to eight days before being spread out to dry. Inside, two women hand-sewed up bags of ready beans that will be sent to the port at St. George's for international distribution. If the load is a big one, Carlton uses a mechanical sewer instead of manual labor. As I finished my brief tour, Larry arrived to join us as we embarked for our final destination, Mt. Horne fermentary.

Settled on what felt to be the top of Grenada, Mt. Horne fermentary is one big, red, metal box not nearly filled enough with sweat boxes. Half of the interior is occupied by an abandoned mechanical dryer - basically a huge trough heated electrically - that once dried the fresh cocoa before Hurricane Ivan decreased the cocoa load and sun-drying became the preferred method. (Solar drying extends the process and produces a dried bean of much higher quality.) Carlton's outdoor drying racks were lined against two sides of the big red building and utilized multiple tiers of racks that could be "stacked" on top of one another when rolled in for the night or during rain. When Paula, Doris, Larry, and I arrived, men and women were walking in the cocoa to speed the drying process.

Houses for drying racks at Mt. Horne

Dinner with guests was imminent, and Paula was Head Chef, so we drove westward back to Victoria. John, my host, Jim, and Lynn joined us for an immobilizing feast of numerous dishes whose names are escaping me. Must be the heat. Or the Creole. Heirloom red rice, delicious salt fish stew, local chicken (hard to get!), fresh fish from John, and salad topped us up for a satisfying evening. Grenada chocolate for dessert sunk us into a stupor.

That's it for yesterday. Today I will head downtown to visit John, jump in the ocean, and, if there's time, visit the Diamond factory just up the road. Tomorrow, us three CFFIers will visit Kenroy, a master of agriculture who we will look to for guidance on our venture down Compost Lane. Until tomorrow…

Owen