Sustainable Farming & WWOOF Volunteer Work
SUENOS DEL MAR - Vieques Island, Puerto Rico
For the duration of Winter Break (December 17th-January 14th, 2017) I lived on a small homestead on the island of Vieques off of the East coast of Puerto Rico. For the duration of my stay, I farmed various plants and attended daily yoga classes in exchange for room and board. This exchange and experience was made possible through WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms).
About Me
My name is Kelly Vatter and I'm an Environmental Studies Major with a minor in INGOs (International Nongovernmental Organizations) at Rhode Island College. My main interest in volunteering through WWOOF was to experience life on a sustainable organic farm; specifically farm management in a tropical environment. In addition, I wanted to learn more about meditation and yoga.
About the Project
My stay and work on Vieques was on a small one-acre property with a single 63-year old woman named Maureen Harrison, who had began her land development 12 years prior. I stayed in a small tent under the protection of Maureen's porch overlooking the land. Throughout the farm she had an assortment of fruit trees, herbs, tropical flowers, and other plants. She had built everything from the ground up; from her home, to ferrocement bathroom structure, and plant growth (starting from seed and graft).
From Farming to Yoga
Importance of Sustainable Farming
Sustainable Agriculture: The use of farming techniques that in result protect the environment, community health and wellness, and animal welfare. Utilizing this type of agriculture allows healthful food production and the ability of future generations the same opportunity to do so.
Benefits:
-Environmental/Animal Welfare: Retaining soil quality through reducing soil degradation and erosion, water and resource conversation, increasing biodiversity by providing natural and healthy atmospheres for both plant and animal life (reduction of use of genetically modified seeds)
-Community Health and Wellness/Animal Welfare: Sustainable and Organic farmers avoid the use of harmful pesticides, fertilizers, animal antibiotics, and growth hormones. Therefore, communities, in addition to the plants and animals, are not exposed to these harmful materials. Economically, local farms provide stronger communities by creating safe work conditions and a balanced food system.
Industrial Agriculture: Massive mechanized market controlled (owned by powerful corporations) farms reliant on immense resource input, chemical pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers.
Harmful Effects:
Monoculture-When large areas of land produce one single crop (monocrop), reducing rich biodiverse ecosystems.
Factory Farming- Enormous industrialized livestock facilities confining thousands to hundreds of thousands of animals in extremely inhuman conditions (no access to outdoors, cramped, use of harmful antibiotics and growth hormones, often abused) to produce meat for consumption. These facilities produce huge amounts of waste overall threatening public health and surrounding natural environment.
Farming dependent on unnatural chemical pesticides, genetically modified crop variants, synthetic fertilizers- reducing biodiversity, depleting and degrading soil, polluting air and water, overall threatening community health.
The use of massive amounts of resources (land and water) with the additional output of large amounts of pollution and toxin-exposed crops and animal products, reduces the opportunity of future use of land and environments for future plant growth and animal life within these areas.
Farming on Suenos Del Mar
Some of the edible plants/fruit trees (specifically what I learned the most about/ate) on Maureen’s property included but were not limited to: pomegranates, limes, cortisol, mango, cinnamon, figs, grapes, ice cream beans, dates (date palms), papaya, guanabana, moringa, carambola (Star Fruit), avocado, pineapples, and neem.
Main tools used in farming and land preparation included but were not limited to: pickaxe, koa, handsaw, rake
Farming Processes and Goals
Weeding/Pruning
Majority of my time working throughout Maureen’s property was spent weeding and pruning. Since Puerto Rico had just ended its rainy season, the weeds and trees had been growing incredibly fast and we had to keep up so that the plants stayed healthy. The land would fill with tall thick grass bunches and small weed trees that overtook huge spaces. Using the koa, I would un-root and pull up each grass bundle one by one. With the hand saw, I would cut down the small weed trees, followed by digging up the roots once again with the koa (or pickaxe if it was rooted deeper). We had to repeat this process essentially throughout the whole property in order to keep land ready for further planting or cement structure building.
Smaller, more pesky weeds called “strangle weeds” would grow and quickly takeover whole sections of the farm, wrapping themselves around the plant’s stem, leaves, and flowers, restricting its growth, damaging it, or eventually killing it. When these weeds were picked, I would have to gently unravel and pull off the wrapped weeds being cautious to not pull off flower, branches, or leaves from the plant.
Another critical process in keeping plants healthy was pruning. Pruning is when either dead or overgrown branches are trimmed and is important in many ways. First, if a branch is dead, it can attract insects and this can result in further damaging of the plant. An overgrown branch limits further growth of the plant; pruning in this situation allows the plant to flourish and provides room to grow further.
Yoga & Meditation
My host mother, Maureen, had been a yoga instructor. Therefore, in addition to farming, my WWOOF experience included both yoga and meditation daily.
Many of her classes began with primitive rituals, which at first I thought were strange as I jumped around to “shake off” all negative energy I was holding onto and blow air out of my closed lips making them flop around and make ridiculous noises. Although, after the second round of this routine, I realized that after them, going through poses and mediations, I had completely let go of outside thought and been fully focused on my body’s energy movement. This was a bizarre feeling, flowing through movements without thinking of perfecting poses, but naturally moving through them almost unconsciously. Like all yoga classes, we would end in shavasana (“corpse pose” lying flat on your back with palms and face facing up) and Maureen would guide us through a meditation. Although I had meditated before, with Maureen’s guidance, I went into the deepest shavasana I had ever before every single time. Although I can’t fully explain, these sessions and mediations completely isolated me from any outside thought and turned my focus to the absolute basics of human emotion and simplicity. Meditation after meditation I was reminded of the unity and shared energy among life as a whole at all capacities.
Ending each class, the group (of mostly tourists visiting the retreat from different locations) would pull their yoga mats into a tight circle and explain what they took away from the class. Each class, we would all end up in tears because of the gratitude and unity we felt during the sessions. Most of my networking was done during these classes, connecting with people from all over the world and making plans for future visits.
Looking Ahead
The future of Maureen's sustainable farming practices in Vieques
Maureen and I had talked a great deal about the future of Puerto Rico’s economy, land, and wellness. We would pass miles of overgrown fields of weeds and get worked up in imagining if that land was cleared and used to grow more useful and profitable life such as neem, which had vast medicinal uses and flowers a favorite to honeybees. About two months past since leaving her farm and during one of our phone dates she told me the news: she was in contact with the head of majority of Vieques Island’s NGOs (nongovernmental organizations/non-profits) and in the process of writing up a project proposal that would give her a grant to clear land (with heavy duty equipment and assistance) to grow neem and farm honeybees. Although the plan is not yet finalized, she was fairly successful and confident that by June she would be given the resources and land (2-3 acres), and later expand if it was deemed as successful. Maureen included me as her assistant in the project, and after graduation I hope to return to Suenos Del Mar and Vieques Island to develop the land and beehives side by side with Maureen.