Being Here – Day to Day Life at Yerba Buena Farm, Jamaica

Baby pineapple

Bees, bees, bees…

Little Kofi

Fixing bicycles, endlessly

Sprawling dog

Taking a break from weed sacking

Having just made rolled foundation candles

Garden produce

Melchizedek loves his pet goat.

Midnight

Kids in the kitchen

Smile for the camera!

Haley’s other little buddy, our demented cat Speng.

Nice harvest

Demonstrating how to properly hold a comb, this little girl is fearless in her shorts and tank top!

Summer time daily harvest from our trees

Coconut drops cooling on a banana leaf (Jamaican wax paper!)

Emmanuel under the stringy mango tree

Having just made tofu and soymilk for the first time, Joshua pouts as he waits impatiently to try it.

Ever-present watermelon

Lovely kitchen table with Kylie, Taylor, calaloo, part of a pollen trap, ackee, an empty honey bottle and loads of Julie mangoes.

Baby ram goats on walkway

Going down into the yard

The view from the beach is lovely!

View from a porch.

Holding honey from a wild hive removal.

After hive inspections, it’s group picture time! That’s intern Taylor in the back row.

Fruit-covered kitchen sink

Ackee

Our first mushroom!

In the garden

Robins Bay Bee Club kids

Typical kitchen scene

More bees…

Green juneplums ready for juicing

Cooked ackee and breadfruit

Jackfruit, jellies and green plantain

A quick snack of sweet potato pudding

Juicy otahiti apple

Kwao building a bamboo hive

Agape and almost all of the boys

A little friend – Beenie Bird

A jackfruit fresh from the tree!

Beautiful sunset

Ribena fruit

Our little sample smelling box with most of our oils

Night time bonfire at the beach

Bonfire at the beach

At a beautiful view spot

Bull frog!

Two batches of honey soap ready to be cut

Cat family

When you are here, on our farm, you’ll have to take the bad with the good.  There are bees, fruit, beaches, flowers – and also mud, mosquitoes, screaming kids, and irritating dogs.  Please take a look at our past interns’ blogs (scroll through our blog for links) for first-hand accounts of their daily life here.  And you can get some information on these pages about possible activities and excursions, how our cabins look, and where we are on the island.

What is new since we last hosted interns is that you will now live at our neighbor’s small beach eco-resort. They will provide accommodations and meals for anyone who participates in our internship program. They have multiple dorm style cabins for housing, and an excellent restaurant for the three daily meals that come with the internship package. The beach is spectacular, and the grounds are spacious and safe. To learn more about their space, please check out their website.

Our community is a small fishing village of around 100 people, mostly families, lots of children. Our neighbors share a “community living room”, hanging out in the town square, laughing, singing karaoke, playing dominoes and supporting our neighbor Sophie’s weekend pop-up jerk stand.

Please check out this video on TikTok that features an American student group that spent a night hanging out with our neighbors up at the road.