Rawle Clarke lives and works in Coverden, a community located along the East Bank, about forty-five minutes by car from Georgetown. He has lived in Coverden for about thirty years and has been farming ever since he went there to live. He says, however, that only about ten years ago he became “a serious farmer.” We talked, initially, about his house that shares the acre of land he farms on. Clarke says the one acre is part of the family land.
It’s not hard to decide that Clark takes his farming seriously. His farm includes neat rows of Scotch Bonnet pepper, a variety of sweet peppers, bora and carilla. Here are his cash crops. The rest, smaller amounts of sugar cane and other food crops are for home use. “Farming is hard work, but I love farming and it brings in the money,” said Clark, emitting a sense of mindfulness as he drills the soil with a threatening looking pitch fork . There is little indication of contemporary technology here. It is mainly concerned with conventional, functional equipment and about sweat. A heartbreak and a determined hand, he said, are still clearing the ground and the playing field is still preparing the beds to prepare the seeds. It takes a whole day for him to prepare three plant beds. If using a hand plow, the task would take about an hour. The restriction is “a question of money.” An investment intended to secure the money to acquire the rain plow had fallen through.