St Catherine woman revels in farming

 Karen Sudu, Gleaner Writer

IF YOU accept Joyce Gordon's invitation to explore her farm cultivated on hilly terrain inherited from her father in Lemon Hall, St Catherine, prepare for a long trek.

However, the 55-year-old single mother would ensure that the tiring tour is cushioned with a few breaks, during which you would have the choice of drinking coconut water, or eating cane or a few mangoes.

At the end, she might offer a bunch of bananas or plantains, a pumpkin, a piece of yam or even some sweet potatoes, tomatoes or ackee.

Gordon said she emulated her father, Samuel, a 109-year-old retired farmer, and took to the soil.

"I wanted to become a nurse, but I didn't get a proper education, and tru I love the market, I start do farming and I just continue to do the farming and sell my goods in the Lluidas Vale and Linstead markets," she told The Gleaner, as the news team took its first break in her cane field adjacent to banana and plantain plots.

"I farm Gros Michel banana, and when I ripen them, I can sell them for between $150 and $250 a dozen, depending on the size. Plantain sell for $50, $60 a finger, it depends," said Gordon.

Her father's gaze, from the back door of his house, followed us as we made our way to the potato and yam fields.

"I plant all kinda yams. Right now, I have a few hills o' yellow and Renta yam," she said.

She also rears nine goats - one billy and eight nannies - and a donkey, which she uses to transport produce from her farm to a section of the district accessible by vehicular traffic.

"I want to put in back some chicken in the coop, but I have to put that on hold because funds kinda low," Gordon explained.

Source of survival

However, the optimistic mother of eight said she was determined that three of her children who are yet to complete school get the opportunity to obtain a good education.

"I always manage to use money from farming to send my children to school. When my children don't go to school, is not really money make them don't go. Is like if they have flu or the rain fall hard and the river come down and they can't cross."

But even as she ensures that her family is fed and her children attend school, she never forgets the rainy day.

"I always save a little in the bank from what I sell, no matter how small, so when I have any emergency I go to the bank, because I don't like to borrow. I just like to finance things for myself," she said proudly.

Her dedication to the profession and continuous participation in activities organised by the St Catherine chapter of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority has won her the respect of not only Sheldon McPherson, extension officer for the Lluidas Vale division, but also Andrew Carty, parish manager.

Forty-seven-year-old Franklyn Burke, also a cultivator, praises his cousin as having tremendous willpower.

"A long time she a farm and it help out she and her kids. She plant her things, she go out and sell them a market and get her little money and buy up any little t'ing she want and send her children to school. She is a good example for any woman and man to follow."

Gordon believes everyone should work to make ends meet. She is particularly peeved at men who sit idly on streetsides.

"Nuff man in Jamaica just sit at the roadside begging. Some of them don't even know how to hold a cutlass or a fork. They need to find something to do, even plant a few crops or raise a few chickens and make a life for themselves," she stated firmly.