Friday I gained a new respect for this awesome planet that God has created and for the perseverance of the Haitian farmer. One of the important cash crops here in the mountains is onions, and early January is the time to prepare your fields for planting.
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| Hi 'hoe', hi 'hoe', it's off to work we go! |
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| These are my /zonyons/, planted from sets, not seeds. Maybe next year. |
From prior trips, I knew where
most of the seedling gardens were planted and really was wondering what they
were going to do. Let me first set up
the process involved in growing ‘zonyons’.
When we thought of planting onions at home is was buying onion sets and
planting and never really thinking about where the sets came from. Well, as hard as this may be to imagine, they
come from seeds! And that’s where we
will start here is planting seeds and then transplanting them in about 6 weeks
into larger ‘jardens’ higher in the mountains.
We’ll fill you in on why the mountains when we get a chance to help them
transplant. Right now I want to talk
about planting ‘zonyon gren’ (onion seeds).
The reason for my skepticism was the seedling jardens were all in the
bottom land along the river. They do
this for a couple reasons. First, the
soil down there is some better than the soil higher up, but mostly because
there is water in the river. If you think
back a few posts, you’ll remember that hurricane Sandy did her very best to
wash away everything along the river, roads, gardens & trees, and replace
it with a generous covering of rock. It didn't seem to me that there would be any place to build new gardens. I’d asked a friend, ‘Tinonm’, if I could help
him ‘fe te’ (work ground) for his jarden.
When we arrived at the site, I was still wondering if there were any
places to build new gardens. The spot he
was working was up on the bank from the river in an area the flood waters
hadn’t reached. It was hard to tell
though, because the whole area was covered with a ‘generous covering of
rock’. They had been here the previous day
and cleared most of the vegetation leaving a pretty steep slope. They had worked it in some places and he
pointed to a spot and showed me he wanted me to start throwing rocks from the
‘tilled’ area off to the sides. It
looked to me like and endless job with not a lot of potential! But, as we worked, you threw off the big
ones, shoveled off the smaller ones and the soil (I almost called it ‘dirt’ but
I’m not sure if it would qualify) started to appear. As we worked, we built small terraces 4-6’
wide that were becoming planting beds as you finish graded the beds with a
rake. I wish I had before and after
pics but I hadn't taken a camera, but in just a few hours what appeared to be
wasteland had been transformed into seedbeds awaiting seed. The area is barely ¼ acre and there’s
probably a 25’ change is elevation front to back. On this little space, they will plant enough
seed to eventually produce over 100 ‘gwo saks’ (large sacks like 100# seed
bags) of mature onions. They will plant
the seed next week and then the hours will then be spent hauling water up from
the river. These beds will be watered
twice daily with a watering can with water carried up 5 gallons at a time. As we worked Tinonm asked me if we grew
zonyons like this back home. I just smiled
and shook my head. I can only imagine
what he would think if he could see me bring the Troy Built out of the barn and
prepare my ‘jarden’ to receive onion sets.
I’m sure he’d just smile and shake his head! I’ll post some pics as we plant and things grow.
"Bondye konnen!" (God knows!) our friend Charlot
