79-year-old farmer still loves tilling the soil

Never burdened by obstacles that may arise, at 79 years old, Valerie Neil is still tilling her farm.

The farmer of over 40 years from Retirement district in St Mary, plants a number of crops with the help of her husband and, on occasion, her children.

"My mother usually farm, enuh. When I was at school, she usually plant callaloo and those things," she said. Among her other crops are Lacatan banana, dasheen, sweet potato, cabbage and pak choi. Though troubled with arthritis, Neil says the key to her happiness has been to keep active.

"December coming I will be 80. You have to active, because if you sit down and don't do anything, you know the pain dem gwine lick you. I have arthritis and high blood pressure, but it don't affect me much," she said.

"If you sit down with arthritis, you not gwine do anything. When you start move 'round you don't feel that pain again, until you go back and go sit down again, then the pain rocks you."

While praedial larcenists plague the area, Neil says she does not allow that to steal her joy.

"Sometime dem cut one banana, but we nah worry we self. We nah worry, 'cause maybe dem want it fi eat. One time we did stop because sometime dem thief a lot," she said.

The only other time that Neil was discouraged from farming was when she lost her daughter.

"I think that after my daughter pass off I never have the motivation. I stopped for a good, good while. My daughter pass off, I think, in 2006," she said.

Neil says during that time, she found solace in caring for her grandchildren, until the urge to grow her own food pulled her back into the business.

While Neil's farm still supplies hotels, she has now scaled back somewhat, only farming for her own purposes. She also allows her children to take over the supplying of produce to their customers.

"Like the banana, my son come and take it to supply hotels, him supply like schools; and my daughter, when she's work at the school, food items like callaloo, cabbage and pak choi, she sells it at the school," she said.