A few weekends ago we took a family trip up to the Morgan Lewis Sugar Mill. This is one of only two working wind-powered sugar mills left in the Caribbean. They turn it on and operate it a few times a year as a fund raiser for the Barbados National Trust. You can pay to walk inside and see the gears cranking, and watch as volunteers feed sugar into the mill just like they have done for hundreds of years. It was a nice outing, and the location on a Bajan hilltop was beautiful.
Some of the volunteers getting the blades going again after a lull in the wind.
The cane going in... and the crushed husks coming out.
Sugar cane season in Barbados is from May - Aug, officially ending with the "crop over" festival. Basically this means that during any of these months you might find yourself stuck behind a slow-moving tractor pulling a truckload of freshly harvested cane to a mill. Cane grows for about 2 years before harvest, and each filed can be harvested 2-3 times before it is replanted. These pictures are all from my daily commute to Conor and Ryan's school...
 |
| A freshly planted cane filed. The mulch is the leaves and tops of the cane left behind after the last harvest. |
 |
| A field just getting going. |
 |
| A field left after harvest to grow its second crop. |
 |
| A couple of months growth. |
 |
| Cane at about 1/2 growth.. no real stalks yet. |
No comments:
Post a Comment