I love farming and cooking with fresh provisions, veg, herbs and edible flowers. Since moving on a farm and volunteering on another one in 2012, growing food has become a natural part of life. In the casita garden, there are trees like palms, moringa, sour sop, paw paw with mango, avocado and coconut in the making, herbs from fennel to fenugreek, plants like aloes, ‘wonder world‘ or ‘leaf of life’ and song of Barbados beside flowers like hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea and tarragon. Here are some steps to start gardening.

I’ve grown food with green monkeys around – even at one point living in large groups in a gully steps away from where I was living for years at a time and though they have a bad reputation among nuff farmers and gardeners island-wide, have never had a problem with them. Growing food in different parishes and only once, a few snapped off the tops of a couple corn stalks in the garden. When they come by to pick soursops and mangoes, they take some, pelt some down (that go into the compost area and eventually grow trees) and still leave some good ones for us. They even used to throw some from the tree for the jack russells I took care of at one point.

Today’s post shares a few photos of farm visits in Barbados, England and a forest in Germany. If naturally-grown food matters to you, ask a question and do your research on the way food is grown on the farms you plan on going to first. That will make a big difference on your under, inner and overstanding of reality. A humungous green can looks impressive but if it was sprayed down with nuff toxins or grown from some strange seed, that’s something you will want to know. If you can grow even some of what you eat, whether it’s herbs to make tea and cook with that’s a start. Hopefully you have access to honest sources of decently-priced organically grown food near where you are.

Barbados

UpRight Farm has blossomed from a 1 acre lot in the middle of Barbados into a magnified multi-acre plot of land in the parish of St. Andrew. The initiative springs from The Sojourner Foundation, a registered charity that promotes agricultural education for the youth in general as well as at-risk youth and women. They’re also a big champion of promoting backyard farming in and beyond communities and have been working hard as an example of innovation when it comes to planting and building a conscious community. The Foundation holds workshops for youngsters to learn about farming and get real-life training in building things like raised beds, planter boxes from palettes and more. We went to visit their new farm earlier this year (2023) and saw how far they have come and they shared some plans in motion to grow even more. Their farm is featured in “Plant Up The Land” music video coming up at the end of this post. Biggup Sky, Leah and the whole team.

Germany

Tucked away in a forest in Deutschland, there’s a small backyard farm with an abundance of food flourishing. She takes care of growing greens while her husband builds things in and around the house. The feature photo for this blogpost is from the day we went over to visit the neighbhours while sharing time with friends. After getting a tour of the garden, they gave us an armful of greens to cook with over the next few days, which we did. They had the biggest naturally-grown cabbage I’ve ever seen and were making good use of the space they had.

England

We had the fun experience of going to a few pick-your-own farms in the U.K and in the post called” “11 Reasons To Visit A Farm & Handpick Your Produce” we literally had a field day picking berries.

11 Reasons To Visit A Farm & Handpick Your Produce