‘Aunty Euette’ and her dream of a citrus farm

CASUALLY walking along her farm with fruit-bearing trees at her hand reach; not having to stretch too far to pick something to eat on the spot is the dream being nurtured by Euette Holly Amsterdam, a farmer in Baracara Village who has her heart set on preparing a citrus farm.

It’s hard to get certain vegetables and fruits in Baracara. At the moment, everyone is planting ochroes and bora, so there’s hardly any opportunity to sell these and other greens. People would, therefore just share their produce within the community.

Fruits such as guavas, limes, lemons, oranges and other foods, though, are difficult to come by, especially after last year’s extreme flooding in the Canje River. There may be other citrus farms along the river, but Euette wants to grow her own.

A “full-fledged Baracara resident,” Pepperpot Magazine met up with Euette on her boat. Her husband, Vernol, constructed it, perhaps never realising that one day it would serve as their home for months. They’ve never seen water come up as high as it rose last year. They couldn’t even stay in their house, but had to live and work in the boat for a whopping three months.

But it was not a problem at all for Euette. “I was born here, grow up here, got married here and am living here right now. Sometimes it’s difficult, but by you grow up in the thing, it’s not so hard,” she expressed during an interview along the Canje River.

She was on her way, with tiny citrus plants, to her farm located about two miles from her home. The plan was to spend a few days there to work on the new citrus farm. “We have two farming areas; one with pine planted for about a mile in the back-dam, and then we are now doing citrus down the river,” she explained.

Nothing in these remote parts is too difficult for Euette, with the support of her husband of course. “The hardest thing for me is to get the field cut. We cut down and burn our field; the hardest thing is to get it prepared. You then get your seeds; sometimes, we buy seeds, or we get from each other. ‘You have bora, please fuh some seed.’”

Euette does pine and plantain on a large scale; these are her main crops. “But I want fruits,” she stressed. “Sometimes we can’t get orange, five finger, lime, lemon, even mangoes in Baracara because the flood killed all the fruit trees. So when I do the citrus farm, we can get fruits in the different seasons. We don’t have to go to New Amsterdam to buy all these things. So it’s my dream to have fruits.”

Boat and Cow
The mother of one, who attended Canje Secondary but couldn’t write exams due to various problems, explained how they’d get their produce from the farm to market. “We use boat and cow to bring the pine. The cow haul the boat up in the backdam, we pack the pine inside, and the cow brings the pine out for us. We will then pack it in the boat to take to New Amsterdam, which is the closest market we have.”

At times, though, the couple would pull in at the side of the river to sell greens if they have an excess and sometimes people would even go to their home to buy.

Euette makes it a point not to use too many fertilizers on her farm as she is skeptical about certain chemicals and prefers to take more of an organic approach to farming. “We use cow mould, old grass, old leaves; my brother teach me how to do compost. I plan to do a lot of composting.”

Having suffered a lot of losses with rice last year, Euette also plans to start back planting rice this year. If they cannot afford to employ persons to help them with the work, then there’s another effective arrangement in place to get the work done.

“If we plant a nice crop and get money, we hire two or three persons to work with us to do the first work. If we have excess planting to do, we hire people, and they help us to plant, and we pay them. If you have no money, you help me, and I help you; a two days you work with me and I work with you a two days and we make things easy.”

Euette, like other Baracara residents, suffered severe losses in last year’s flood and is still hoping that the government will stick to its word of providing some relief. In the meantime, she continues to be absolutely in love with life in Baracara. “Life in Baracara is not hard, because once you can work, you can eat. You can plant the fastest crop and get food in three months. I don’t pay light bill and water rate. I live free. My neighbour has a generator we get light from. That’s it.”