ROLSTON Reece lives at the far end of the village of Moblissa among the sparsely placed home and numerous farms. Rolston, or Rolo as his neighbours call him, is a farmer who says that turning seedlings into plants is his God-given gift.

Rolston, now 58, came to the village with his father as a young man after he dropped out of high school at 15. He explained that school was not what he was interested in, and after his father opened his farm in Moblissa’s backlands, he decided to leave school and become a farmer.

“My grandfather told me that farming was my gift and that I should make use of it. Farming is my gift, agriculture on the whole,” Rolston said. And it would seem as though his grandfather was right. In his many decades of farming, Rolston has been a part of almost every aspect of farming and agriculture. But his favourite period of farming was the age of tobacco in Guyana.

Tobacco farming is a big part of Moblissa’s past. Moblissa was home to one of the country’s largest tobacco farms at one point and Rolston was among the farmers. Farming tobacco, he said, is unique and different from the cultivation of other crops.

Rolston explained that “I was a tobacco farmer. I farmed tobacco from the time it started to the time it ended. Tobacco farming is more high-tech than normal farming. Because if you do not have a nursery, you can not have a crop. So, for all farmers to get a crop, they need to be able to bring a crop.”

Tobacco in Guyana was interesting because, unlike other crops that are sent to factories elsewhere, there was a tobacco factory in Guyana. When tobacco farming ended in Guyana, the cultivated lands were given away to the farmers. “The company would buy back the tobacco from us. The tobacco was not exported. The factory was here in Guyan,” Rolston said, and with the end of tobacco, he and his fellow farmers had to find alternatives. Rolston himself continued farming. He has never left the village of Moblissa and has continued to farm everything from cash crops, to ground provisions and fruit trees.

Rolston’s love for farming is distinct and ingrained in him so much so that Rolston talks to his plants. With his acres of land, which continue to grow each year, Rolston still finds time to talk to his crops. “I have been on my own all the time. I do not know about other farmers, but farming is my career, and I love that. Sometimes, people would see me talking to my plants, but when a man loves his plants, he talks to them,” he said.

Being able to bring a plant to life, Rolston says, is a special gift. He stated, “I think the gift of agriculture, you are born with it. If I throw a seed anywhere, it will grow. Sorrel, for example, I do not plant sorrel, but they grow in my yard. And sorrel plants itself back.”

His favourite aspect of farming he says is seeing the very first stages of plant life. This is where they are most vulnerable. “My favourite thing about farming is setting up a nursery. Because if you plant a seed and it does not grow, then it does not make sense,” he said.

With soil as rich as Moblissa’s, Rolston plants as many different types of crops as possible. He sometimes even combines plants not normally grown together. He stated that, “I farm a set of different crops. Right now, there are cassavas, but between them there are fruit trees. And with this kind of weather, the cassava can take sun off of the fruit trees.”

Rolston’s plants are more than simply plants to him. He said, “I tell people not to touch my plants. The same way we may talk, I talk to my plants. If I am setting a seed, mixing, or adding fertiliser, I talk to them. I ask them if the soil is too strong or too weak. I trust plants more than I trust human beings. And people want to know how I make it alone, but I have my plants.”