Tag: OGS Cuba Agroecology Tour 2020

Cuban Agriculture: Finca L’Armonia (Permaculture Farm), Viñales

Finca L’Armonia Ecologica sign, Viñales, Cuba
Photo by Pam Dawling

Cuban Agriculture: Finca L’Armonia Ecologica (Permaculture Farm), Viñales

Day 5 – Saturday January 11 (Viñales) late afternoon

After lunch at Finca Paraiso restaurant and a tour of their beautiful farm, we visited

Finca L’Armonia (Ecological Permaculture Farm)

Our 27-year-old host farmer Yoani arrived on horseback. He is farming 1 hectare (2.2 acres) of his family of origin’s 13 hectares. It is a lovely farm. The farmer had twice been to France for permaculture training. His mother, sister, and grandfather farm the other 12 hectares as a coop that sells to the government (we saw part of this in a fenced area of shaded annual crops). He does permaculture on his portion.

I thought this was a coffee tree, but a better informed reader told me it’s a passion fruit vine growing up in a tree. Finca L’Armonia, Viñales, Cuba
Photo Pam Dawling

He grows two varieties of coffee (trees his grandfather planted) and had coffee for sale in plastic water bottles. Because tourists are urged to drink only bottled water, empty water bottles are a convenient container for any kinds of seeds, as we saw at the bean seed conservation center, Finca Hoyo Bonito (see March 17 2020 post). He also grows passionfruit, avocado, pineapples, mangoes, and other fruit trees including Cuban pears.

The very welcoming compost toilet at Finca L’Armonia, Viñales, Cuba
Photo Pam Dawling

He maintains worm bins and a composting toilet (top quality!) – the first composting toilet we saw on our tour. I am surprised there are not more composting toilets in the rural areas. Some tourist spots have horrible restrooms!

Worm bin at Finca L’Armonia, Viñales, Cuba. it’s hard to take a good picture of a worm bin, fascinating as they are!
Photo Pam Dawling

My room-mate Julia and I had dinner at our casa, cooked by our hosts. We had soup, salad, rice, red snapper fish, ice cream with honey. All delicious.

In the evening I did some shopping at a souvenir street market in Viñales.

Here is a video about this farm, from Franny’s Farmacy. Made by two of my fellow travelers on the OGS Tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j15aZoD9ZNQ

Young pineapple plants, Finca L’Armonia, Viñales, Cuba
Photo Pam Dawling

For a longer video, about Agroecological Farming in Cuba in general, see the 2017 Agroecology in Cuba, with English subtitles, by Lepore y van Caloen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jShKWeoqkiU

To read more about the Organic Growers School organized trips and Cuban agriculture, see this article written by our fantastic tour guide Yoseti Herrera Guitián, who started working as a tour guide in 2013 with Amistur Cuba, a specialized tourism travel agency that is part of ICAP (Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples). She has worked with diverse groups focused on topics such as health, education, culture and mostly agriculture. Open as a new page here: https://organicgrowersschool.org/cuba-through-the-seasons

or click the link below, which will redirect you.

Cuba Through the Seasons

 

Virginia Farming Workshop, and Cuban AgroEcology Tour: La Palma Farm, Pinar del Rio Province

Introduction to Permaculture and Organic Farming and Gardening Workshop 2020

Saturday August 8, 2020 2.30-8.30 pm. Cost: $75

Day Spring Farm, 842 Buena Vista, Shacklefords, VA 23156

Click the link in the title for all the details. Social distancing and face coverings required.

Organic Farming Workshop 2020-1

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Cuban AgroEcology Tour: La Palma farm, Pinar del Rio Province

Roberto or Eduardo cultivating tobacco with oxen. La Palma, Pinar del Rio, Cuba
Photo Pam Dawling

Here’s another post about the Organic Growers School Agroecolgy Tour I participated in back when we could travel! I feel so fortunate to have made this trip this January. You can read about other parts of this Tour under the Cuban Agriculture category or at these links:

My Cuba farming trip.

Alamar Urban Organic Farm

Finca Marta

Finca Hoyo Bonito Bean Seed Bank

After our initial stay in Havana, we traveled west for three hours to stay a few days in the Viñales Valley in the province of Pinar del Rio.

Day 5 – Saturday January 11, morning

Our day started with an 8 am breakfast at our casa particulare in Viñales. We enjoyed fruit, tea, coffee, juice, cookies, bread, pancakes, cheese sandwiches, and ham. No eggs today.

The oxen team at la Palma, Pinar del Rio, Cuba
Photo by Pam Dawling

We took our tour bus to visit the ANAP (National Association of Small Farmers) cooperative agricultural project La Palma. ANAP farmers have less than 67 hectares each. According to Wikipedia, currently ANAP members produce 52% of the vegetables, 67% of the corn, and 85% of the tobacco grown in Cuba.

We met tobacco producers Roberto and Eduardo, who are brothers. Each farm is allowed a certain tobacco quota by the Cuban government. They are growing 40,000 tobacco plants as their quota and another 40,000 using a neighbor’s irrigated land in trade for their use of some dry land. Tobacco needs irrigated land, and their neighbor did not have the other resources to grow a tobacco crop this year. The government agreed to this swap because of the poor state of the national economy.

How to hang tobacco leaves on sticks. La Palma farm, Pinar del Rio, Cuba.
Photo Pam Dawling

La Palma also grows vegetables (tomatoes, beans with some interplanted corn plants to protect the beans from pests), and cassava. They use oxen for cultivating the fields. We had some juice, a taste of red mamey fruit (Pouteria sapota), and the chance to buy cigars for $2 each.

Tomato plants at La Palma, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, grown right up against the amazing limestone cliffs.
Photo by Pam Dawling

Next we paid a visit to a farm with a small cigar manufacturing business, Manolo Tobacco Farm, for a demonstration of cigar-making, and a chance to buy different kinds of cigars. All the cigars are rolled by hand and the men demonstrating the technique are also professional in engaging the audience. After rolling a cigar for us, the demonstrator lit it, showed how to smoke cigars and passed it round.

Closeup of limestone cliff at La Palma, Rio del Pinar, Cuba
Photo by Pam Dawling

See this video of cigar making at Manolo Tobacco Farm, made by Franny’s Farmacy, two of the other people on my Organic Growers School Tour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_mXuImolMQ

At this place I was dismayed to find a nasty toilet (not the first of this trip): no seat, no paper, no flush. The toilet tank was not connected to a water supply. The water at the sink was very slow, and even though a bucket was provided, filling it to flush the toilet seemed very challenging. How can a tourist attraction have such terrible toilets? Why are there not more composting toilets?

Cuba, at least in the northwest, suffers from a shortage of water, and ancient mainline plumbing that leaks a lot. When we arrived at the José Martí International Airport in Havana, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the water supply had been temporarily shut off to the restrooms. Havana has a natural port, but no river drains into it. See Rivers in Cuba map to appreciate the unfortunate geography!

The Albear Aqueduct was constructed in Havana in 1858, in a neoclassical style and still supplies 20% of Havana’s water. A marvel of mid-19th century engineering, the water comes from the de Vento springs by gravity. This fresh water helped the city reduce the terrible cholera epidemics and earned a gold medal at the 1878 Paris Exposition

Tourist transportation in Viñales: vintage cars and horse and cart.
Photo by Pam Dawling