ResortHatch

Grenada’s female farmers are driving a beautiful ecosystem.

It’s a scenic seven-mile ride from the oceanside fruit buffet at Sandals Grenada through lush hills and valleys to the edge of an easy-to-miss driveway and the resort’s newest farm to table exursion. You know this must be the right spot because of the aroma traveling on the Caribbean breeze. Herbs are blossoming. Spices are in their glory. When the door of the Island Routes, Sandals’ sister company and exclusive tour operator, van opens, an island-cultivated lunch seems to hang in the air.

Sandals Grenada

This is T’s Eco Garden and the woman greeting guests with a sunny smile and refreshing coconut water straight from the tree is T herself: Theresa Marryshow.

“Would you also like some tea?” Theresa says, rattling off a few just-picked varieties: basil, mint, cinnamon, cocoa, and moringa.

Owner of T’s Eco Garden and Presindent of the Grenada Netowrk of Rurual Women Producers, Theresa Marryshow

Theresa exudes an envious amount of energy and happiness. It’s all natural. She genuinely loves all of her jobs: operator of this abundant farm, baker of the coconut bakes she’s passing around, and driving force behind a network of nearly 100 farmers around the island known as GRENROP (Grenada Network of Rural Women Producers).

If you want a quick course in “self-sustaining agriculture,” look around the GRENROP farms. You’ll find water catchments, irrigation systems, and shade houses, each is courtesy of the Sandals Foundation. There’s every stage of botanical growth — seeds, seedlings, plants, and produce. Theresa’s place, for example, stays in perpetual season with arugula, kale, half a dozen types of lettuce, mango, starfruit, and root vegetables. While nearby and out of sensory range is a compost pile.

“Our farmers had training in composting from Sandals,” Theresa says. “The fruits and vegetables in Grenada grow better when we let them grow organically. They taste better, too.”

As Theresa speaks, coconut husks fuel an open fire under a big pot of deliciousness. In it cooks the eclectic national dish of Grenada: oil down. The recipe for today’s farm-to-table lunch might have changed from a few days ago. That’s how oil down is done here. It all depends on which vegetables are in season and being picked and delivered at GRENROP farms. Today, the pot is full of callaloo, turmeric, breadfruit, carrots, kale, yams, coconut milk, collard greens, and a potpourri of sweet spices.

A pot of oil down cooking at T’s Eco Garden.

“I can keep it vegetarian or add farm-raised chicken or saltfish from the ocean, whatever you like,” Theresa says. When she’s asked where her passion for farming comes from, she doesn’t hesitate. “My grandparents. They always told me, ‘When you eat and drink local, you remain healthy.’ Now my desire is to share what I know with others.”

She’s happy to share all of it — her wisdom, her story, and the fruit of her labor — with guests as they spoon into bowls of her oil down.

Before there was GRENROP, there was Theresa’s grandmother.

She showed Theresa how to cultivate, plant, weed, and harvest. Theresa can still smell her grandparents’ sweet potatoes roasting over a fire in the garden.

“The sweetest potatoes ever,” she says. “At a very young age, I learned the importance of agriculture for survival. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, doctor, teacher … you have to eat good food to have a good life.”

The lessons on the family farm inspired Theresa to study agriculture in college, which dovetailed into a 42-year career with Grenada’s Ministry of Agriculture. Whenever she’d drive around the island, conducting surveys and building relationships, she’d notice women working the farms the way her grandmother did.

A member of GRENROP embraces Grenada’s rich agriculture.

Theresa understood agriculture as a path to financial freedom for women. She also knew they had the work ethic to grow enough fresh produce to earn a living, be independent, and even reduce food insecurity across the island. In December 2000, she helped a small group of female farmers form GRENROP, which could be supported with training and networking.

“I wanted to walk alongside these women because I kept seeing my grandmother in them,” Theresa says.

To walk even closer, Theresa retired from the ministry of agriculture years later to become a full-time farmer and president of GRENROP. The women were working as hard as ever with whatever resources they had available. They’d sell fresh produce at weekend markets but were unable to reach their biggest potential partners — hotels.

“And then …” Theresa pauses to emphasize a dramatic change, “… we met our friends at Sandals. When they opened their hotel on the island they immediately showed interest in our farmers.”

While touring farms and meeting the women working the land, the Sandals Foundation recognized enormous possibilities. So, the foundation provided irrigation systems, seeds, and a nursery for the most rural farms. With each improvement, the farmers were able to increase production until they had a pathway into the kitchens at Sandals Grenada. When chefs at other hotels asked where the Sandals food and beverage team was consistently finding so much quality food, they heard a simple response: GRENROP.

“The people at Sandals believed in us,” Theresa says. “That’s why I say they put our farm network on the map.”

Sandals Grenada

It’s a growing network and a growing map. The farmers earned so much respect that they recently began inviting husbands and boyfriends who want to learn about sustainable agriculture from them. There are four generations of GRENROP, including several girls under the age of 10 who were registered by their parents. The network now partners with hotels and restaurants across Grenada, and supermarkets as far away as the island of Carriacou.

And twice a week, the rewards reaped by GRENROP come to this pot in Theresa’s garden, where guests indulge in so much that is good on the island.

The road from Sandals to T’s Eco Garden runs two ways.

Guests come to Theresa’s table through the Island Routes tour, and she also goes to theirs. In addition to planting, tending, harvesting, and hosting meals, several times a week she drives a truck loaded with freshness to the loading dock at Sandals.

“I can guarantee you this,” she says with that ever-present smile, “the guests at Sandals are eating good, healthy food.”

The crops have become so bountiful that in April, GRENROP will open an agro-processing facility — entirely provided by the Sandals Foundation. With it, they can convert fresh coconuts into flour, flakes, and oil, or mash the sweetest potatoes you’ve ever tasted into vegan baking ingredients. The chill room will expand storage for the nonstop harvests.

“Everyone will benefit,” Theresa says.

And she means everyone. While vacationers at Sandals fawn over pumpkin and nutmeg soup at the resort’s restaurant Spices, and while guests on the Island Routes tour eyeball another serving of oil down, more deliveries are being planned. These will go from GRENROP farms to tables in nearby communities and to people of all ages.

“Giving back lifts our morale,” Theresa says. “And like my grandparents said about good food. It makes for a good life.”

This is why she’s happy to tell people at her table to “eat as much as you’d like.” It’s good, and she has plenty.