Holiday Fashion Show

Vacation for a Change

Winter is coming,

days are short.

Why shovel snow,

when you could be picking cocoa?

Work together with the farmers

harvesting their cocoa in the

 paradis de l'ile aux epices! 

You'll learn how to ferment and shuffle cocoa...

Take day trips with CFFI guides to St. George and the beach, or

walk in the rain forest to the water falls...

You can make cocoa balls with Missis Agatha...

or go fishing with the locals...

and enjoy the tastes and sights of island life...

Proposed trip dates 2013

January 20-27

February 17-24 (optional extra week of work & Carnival)

March 10-17

Space is limited to seven guests on each trip.

For more information contact:

Dorise Kowalewski

doko@cffigrenada.org

603-863-6366

See www.cffigrenada.org to read about our mission.

Gathering and fermenting

Time for harvesting

A good day's work,

empty cocoa pods

This is what cocoa looks like before fermentation

Gelatinous coating tastes sweet and sour

Sorting the beans

Still wet, but fermented

Starting to look like cocoa... 

Sun drying trays are on rails and are pushed like a drawer

into the boucan for the night

The drying trays are as big as your kitchen,

it takes two people to push them

A mountain of dried cocoa beans

ready to...

 bag!

While the cocoa pods are growing….

We are organizing our wares for the 

Christmas Market with a Difference

Shake, shake from the Bolly tree…

Vetiver sachet

Bundles of calabash

Cocoa tea anybody?

Cocoa Tea recipe from Diamond Estate Grenada

Cocoa tea is a rich, local breakfast drink. In olden times, tiny flour

dumplings were boiled in the cocoa tea, making the drink a complete

meal -- the cocoa tea being the drink and the dumplings replacing the

bread.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup grated local cocoa stick or 70%dark chocolate

2 cups water

1 cup milk (cream, 2%coconut milk, or low-fat)

Sugar to sweeten

Vanilla

2 whole cardamon

Bay leaf

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

Put water to boil with cinnamon and bay leaf. Boil for about 15

minutes. Grate cocoa stick and add to boiling water; boil for another

10 minutes. Add cream (or evaporated milk, 2%coconut milk, or low-fat

milk to reduce calories). Sweeten to taste. Don't forget the nutmeg Mix

the cornstarch with water and slowly add to the boiling mixture,

stirring all the time.  Strain and serve.

Donkey Eye

A seed from a vine that grows in the lush tropical forest

Used as a good luck charm….

Red Bead Tree

Adenanthera pavonina

Seeds have long been a symbol of love ...

Come join us at the Christmas Market with a Difference

in Hanover, New Hampshire

1st, 2nd, & 3rd of November 2012

Thursday & Friday 10-6 p.m.

Saturday 10-1 p.m.

http://www.ccdcucc.org/cmwad/

The Joy of Chocolate...

Have you ever wondered 

where your chocolate came from?

A Grenadian Sky

It has been fun, creating blisters on our hands, sweating in the hot Caribbean heat, and falling a couple times on the slippery slopes while learning how hard a good days work is for a Grenadian Farmer. Getting the pleasure of learning how to use a cutlass takes time and a little bit of the desire to destroy. A mixture of precision and strength the main tool of a Grenadian farmer is used for Everything. You learn to respect the tool, the sharpness, strength and versatility. Today the tool was used to harvest cocoa pods. Earlier in the week the tool was used to clear and cut trees into smaller decomposable pieces to replenish the soil. They are also used to peel a juicy orange for a nice afternoon snack while working in the bush.

As said, today we harvested Cocoa for our first time. Walking up and down Kim’s farm with my cutlass at the ready, I picked up the cocoa pods that Devon had knocked down with his tool of choice, a long bamboo rod with a knife at the end. Using the back tip of the cutlass, a simple flick of the wrist and the cocoa pod becomes stuck to the end then placed in a bag. Making piles of cocoa pods as we gather more and more pods we decide we have gathered enough for today. The next process is splitting the pods and pulling the wet seeds out. Using the trusty cutlass, another flick and twist the pods split apart and seed fall out. Picking out by hand the couple seeds that hide in the bottom of the pods, the wet seeds are placed in buckets and hauled down to the sweat boxes. To finish off our day of harvest the wet cocoa seeds are poured in the sweatboxes and cover with banana leaves to keep the heat in. Now we wait and let the fermentation of the seeds do their own work. With a good days work along side a handy cutlass, our first harvest was a success.  

Peace,

Charlie

Planting Seedlings

  One of the projects we have taken on in this short time in Grenada has to do with local schools. Ali, who will be studying education in grad school, was interested in reaching out to the younger generations of Grenada. Although we got a bit of a late start, we (Ali& Megan) got to go the the local school in Victoria to meet many of the kids who go to school there. Unfortunately, summer break has just begun so we sort of missed them other than the one day we were allowed to talk to the whole school. That day, the kids were gathered in this big assembly room. After a brief introduction by a kind administrator, Ali took the floor and explained who we are and what we are doing here in Grenada. After Ali asked the kids who would be interested in having his or her own tree to watch grow over the next few years planted in his or her yard, many hands shot up into the air. So, the teachers took down some names and numbers of the eager children for us to call later. The next day, Ali and I got on the phone to make the calls to parents. We got through to some people but not everyone. Either numbers were wrong or parents were not home, etc. We are still in the process of getting in touch with some families however on Friday we did plant three trees in yards around Victoria. The parents were very kind to us, helped us get the water to feed the seedlings with. Other than the planting at homes in the area, we set up 6 plants on the school grounds. The Victoria school has it's own garden so with the help of a friend named Yvonne and her daughters (who attend the school) we planted two breadfruit trees, two cocoa trees, and two nutmeg trees in the school garden. All of this is still going on right now because we have to keep checking up on the seedlings and still need to go back to place some signs in the ground near the trees. I hope that those trees get big and strong so the kids at the school can watch them grow. Hopefully, more interest will be cultivated in farming, too. This is a major goal of CFFI, which will hopefully be carried into the future, also. Here are some pictures I took on Friday when Owen, Ali and I did the planting around town. Thanks for your support! 

Peace, love, earth _Megan

Tools for the day

Plant, then water!

     

July 10, 2012

The past week has opened up my eyes to a number of different socio-economic issues facing cocoa farmers here. Yesterday, we all got to work up in the bush on Kim’s farm, which was a delightful, yet fatiguing experience. I feel as though it genuinely helped all of us to see what true cocoa farming is like in Grenada, a realization that is vital to have knowledge of in order to enact positive change for the locals. We comprehended that cocoa farmers really need help with labor and being able to pay employees to work their land.  This will not only help the farmer be able to increase their crop, allow for less waste to be created on the land, and keep some physical burden off of one person, but also put money back into the local economy. However, due increasing prices in minimum wage, small farmers cannot afford to employ these people. With this said, throwing money at farmers is also not the way to go about tackling this problem either. This can give us some issues to contemplate.

            In addition to working in the Bush, we have been surveying the farmers, which I feel has been going swimmingly. Owen and I got a good group of farmers the other day at a cocoa pick up point. Not only did we have rich, poor, small, big, farmers, but also some government officials as well. I’m excited to look over all the answers and see the overarching themes of these surveys.

            As for the wheel borrows, here in the next couple days we are starting the prototype for the first one. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that finding scrap on the island is exceeding difficult unless you want to pay lots of money. Providentially, Indian, a youthful Grenadian with a lot of connections on the island has offered to help with this barrier. I’m hopefully things will start turning up soon.

Cheers,

Sarah