Food Adventures : Bee Heaven Farms

I am a convert of the live in the now faith. I make a conscious effort daily to enjoy my life and all its gifts and blessings everyday. One of the things that is a big part of my live in the now is actively enjoying things, all things, bright and beautiful, great and small. Atop this list of course, is food.  Thus, things typically considered mundane like buying produce, become an adventure.  Years in boarding school have taught me to find delight and laughter in the tiniest of things, and as I get older I am thankful for those lessons. 

For example, on this particular adventure to down to the Bee Heaven Farm in the Redlands , we noticed one of the farms used plums trees, like they do in Jamaica as a border along the perimiter of the farm. 

I’m talking an explosion of green plums, on whole heap a trees, me hanging out the window of the car, and Lisa asking “yu see no red one, you see no red one?” This was simple, but also a living in the now moment that made me very happy.

We drove by the perimeter plum trees when we were thoroughly lost. Back up likkle bit though – cart gone clear outa di gate before di donkey to baxide. I mentioned Bee Heaven Farms in my second post – Lisa gets a half a share in the winter that she picks up at a location in North Miami, and in the summer, she orders what she needs and picks it up at the actual farm in the Redlands. My understanding of the process is that the heat in the summer time is a bit much for some of the very delicate herbs and vegetables that they grow like zucchini, lettuce, parsley, and escallion. Summertime seems to be the fruit time. The air in the farm house was filed with that sweet sweet smell of really ripe mangoes. I mean, instant transport back home to mango groves in the bushes of Seaforth, St Thomas where the ground is carpeted with fallen mangoes in the summertime.

You know how songs trigger memories? Well food smells trigger memories too. There is a dam in Serge Island St Thomas (now referred to as Reggae Falls  ) –that either fell into disrepair or was never used for its intended purpose of harnessing hydro-electricity. Abandoned project or not, dat river water is the coldest, crispest, and most refreshing place of frolic in my memory to date (a close second is tubing down white river ). Wata did so cowl we coulda submerge a crate a soda and have cold pepsis and cola champagnes in an hour or so. Daddy would pack up us and all our friends into one of the buses on hot summer days and shuttle us up to the dam, through the mango groves. On one trip the floor of the bus was filled with mangoes we had stopped and picked up to eat during our day swimming at the dam. The smells of the farm house in the Redlands brought me right back to the pre-teen years where summer meant plenty mango and river bathing.

I get one or so digressions per post don’t it? So back to the Redlands. Lisa couldn’t remember precisely where it was so we had to program our GPS Gwen. My GPS in Columbia’s name is Tom (short for Tom Tom and my car’s name is Juan, Juan Toyota to be more precise). We name our cars and some of their accessories. That being established, it wasn’t really Gwen’s fault that when she said “arriving at your destination on the left,” the only thing to the left was an empty field. Same thing on the right, and ahead and behind was a dirt road. You see, what had happened was, she never got programmed with precise enough directions – why? Because the actual address could not be found in her directory – see how far outa bush we did deh? She got programmed with half of it and we ended up a good couple a blocks west of where we were supposed to be.

At this point, Lisa decides to go for markers that she recognizes. After misrecognising a Tom Thumb as the small no name convenience store that was at the corner of the road we should have turned on, we drove till there was no more road, paved or dirt  - but found the plum tree perimeter. With just a likkle track ahead we had to reassess.  We soon discovered that “Good Morning, do you know where Bee Heaven farm is” had to be “Hola, donde esta Bee Heaven” pero, the only response we got was “no se.” Typically I get a little antsy when we are lost. I don’t like getting lost. It scares me,  really it does. We got lost off the Long Island express way once and I swear to you I think the only reason Lisa stopped and asked for directions was because she was scared I would have a melt down and we never had time for that plus return the rental and mek a flight back to Florida. Driving wise, Lisa likes to navigate her own way out of being lost. I just like to know exactly where I going and cant really deal wid when I don’t. There’s nothing like moving to the Midwest by yourself to fix that right up though. I’m a lot more relaxed now, having ended up at the end of the paved road or amidst soy been fields on a few occasions in Missouri. So once we pin pointed where we were, and checked back the address, we started again to try to find this place, and eventually, we found it.

As you can already tell, the trip down there was perhaps more exciting than what we actually went down to pick up: beets, mangoes, organic honey, eggs, and smoked eggs. 

Sometimes the actual adventure isn’t the food, its what it takes to get to it. Getting lost in the Redlands, laughing our asses off when Lisa threw down the car in the water filled trenches in the dirt roads at 60 mph, the plums, the smells evocative of summers long gone, realizing I no longer regard getting lost with intense trepidation, and sharing that ease with the person who had to handle my phobia of being lost the most, are the things whe mek di trip. This is one of the things that I miss most when I'm in Missouri: food adventures with Lisa that are so much more than what we end up stuffing ourselves with. I can only hope that while I am gone, she and Alli B will also find the same mutual understandings of and respect for each other through food adventures of their own. Perhaps after years and years of being separated by school and age, all three of us in the same place can enjoy and appreciate the same things together.  What better way to do that but over food? Caw wah? It eat good!

PS

Nevamind di sorry resolution on the pics. Camera bruk a week ago and I have to be workin wid di camera phone till canon send it back good as new. Also, 

Coming up:

more Redlands fun stuff – “Have you been to Knaus Berry Farm?”