April Farm Tours

Tobacco

pm Hillbilly, I am sure he can arrange something for you.

D.D. is the man

Tobacco will have finished the harvest by then.

I could show you the processing, but if you are not into cigars, it might be a little overkill.

Rice farming? I can get you going in the right direction? Macadamia, Avocados?

Will be a lot of travelling...Let me know.

HB

D.D. is your answer. Debebe and Jetta are the most lovely people with one of the cleanest and nicest businesses on the entire Island and whats more their Bananas are ORGANIC. Heck we should plan a road trip while you are there since it has been a while since a group of us have been there.

Shads place is also a great place and a great experience. A lovely family to boot so make sure you get em all and not just shad!

Scott

If you like plants

I'd be happy to take you as my guest to our plantation. It is not a working plantation but is beautiful anyway! We are about 25 minutes from Playa Dorada. I am sure both you and your dad would enhance our knowledge at the plantation as well.

Let me know by PM when you are here and I will make the arrangements.

Well darling you need to come to the Finca de Escott then.

I have 2 goats, one boy and one gal. Boy is named billy and gal is named goat.

I have mucho stuff growing on 5500 meters. Yucca, batata, corn, peppers of all sorts, bananas, plantanos, avocado, orange, limon, grapefruit, noni, peas, red beans, white beans, melon, squash, summer squash, watermelon, 5 types of tomatos, cucumbers, basil, coconuts (two types) mango (many types), papaya, lettuce, radish and mucho ornamental stuff. I have a full time person there who plants and cultivates every day. Probably more but off the top of my head I can't remember.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of this. Will start my farmhouse when the dollar or prices come back in line.

Escott

PS> get in touch with Jamie who is Dolores's hubby. He has a lot of interest in this and teaching methods for producing more and better with worms and composting.

Julia Alverez and her husband Bill have an organic coffee farm just outside Jarabacoa and Bill told me that they welcome visiters. They live most of the year in Vermont, i think, but Bill in a trained Agri-something or another. Certainly their place sounds like something your Dad would enjoy. They have a website. http://www.cafealtagracia.com/

bob saunders said:

Julia Alverez and her husband Bill have an organic coffee farm just outside Jarabacoa and Bill told me that they welcome visiters. They live most of the year in Vermont, i think, but Bill in a trained Agri-something or another. Certainly their place sounds like something your Dad would enjoy. They have a website. http://www.cafealtagracia.com/

Click to expand...

Julia Alvarez the author? I wouldn't mind going to the farm just to meet her.

Larry

An important question:

Which week?

Grapes are out of the question. They are on the other side of the island.
Macadamia are out near the border, so a two day trip with one day to see D.D. and Jetta and the next to see the macadamia.

ISA has a small herd of goats. Black Belly. Might be interested in Boar variety.
Tabacco/cigars are no sweat.

ISA is the Instituto Superior de Agricultura, the DR's answer to Texas A & M. It was founded with that in mind. Top of the line faculty, many outstanding graduates. Of course, it is here in Santiago....

HB

Hi MaineGirl,

I have not seen Boer Goats here and would certainly recognize them as they are from my neck of the woods originally...

They have them here

A good friend of mine is buying a certified he-goat for RD$15000 tomorrow. He is raising goats.

FYI Goat meat is getting way up in price and nowadays you can't really be sure if it is sheep or goat...
Might be something for Shadly to look into...

I learned that you have to separate the males from the females really early since copulation appears to stunt the female's growth!! At least according to one tale I heard today.. Gee, I wonder about hair growing on your palms?????


HB

I saw for the first time last week a tobacco harvest and I was quite spellbound. As I was driving along a little country road, my eye caught this row of 'bobbing heads' just slightly above the tobacco leafs, off in the distance. Strangest site I ever saw. On getting closer I saw a row of fellows sitting on, and peddling what looked like stationary bicycles. On getting even closer, I saw that the front wheels were attached to a fairly narrow conveyor belt about hip high. The conveyor belt disappeared into the fields and is the leaf transportation belt. In the fields, pickers were picking mature leaves and laying them on this conveyor belt. As the leaves on the belt reached the fellow madly peddling his stationary bike, 'picker uppers' neatly took them off, smoothed them out a little and carefully packed into packing boxes for transportation to drying sheds.

As the 'peddlers' got tired, the 'picker uppers' would relieve them on the stationary bikes. What really impressed me, was the combination of modern technology, i.e., the conveyors and the bikes, and manual labor, and the ease with which these two processes came together. It is one of the neatest harvesting processes I've seen. Surely beats harvesting rice with harvesters sloshing about in the muddy fields.

cool blog! Goats are neat.