So THAT’S what a dragon fruit looks like! This and other photos on this page by Eric Jackson.
The easier and healthier way
to grow your living
by Eric Jackson
John Douglas has been a private sector agronomist for some time now. When, as a subcontractor he worked to set up a park in Panama City? A few years back, and he was never paid. He taught organic permaculture for Uncle Sam as a Peace Corps volunteer and otherwise, but now he holds forth in his second farm near Penonome, smaller and a bit closer to town than the previous one, with the back of his property on the Zarate River. There are various aspects to the business, but subsistence agriculture and the teaching of sustainable farming without all the chemicals are the main things. As a side gig for some of the neighbors, he gives some English lessons. He’s not set up to do it as a main business, but you might be able to get a plant, a cutting or some seeds to start growing your own stuff.
These days John’s truck has died, he’s an octogenarian and he generally gets around by public transportation. People find their ways to his farm out on Via Sonadora north / northeast of the Penonome town center, across from the Catholic Church in the corregimiento of Pajonal. It’s along the back roads that meander from Penonome to El Valle, a little ways up from the historic battlefield where Victoriano Lorenzo’s Liberal guerrillas defeated the Conservatives in a trench warfare episode of the Thousand Days War, setting the stage for Lorenzo to take Penonome and Aguadulce. Sonadora’s a somewhat sparsely populated, prosperous neighborhood these days. It’s part of a scenic drive from El Valle to Penonome or vice versa.
At one point the government was into “agricultural tourism,” which was one of the premises for the first Lazy Man’s Farm, but in recent times “tourism promotion” is about subsidies to ad agencies and tax incentives to build redundant hotels. And agricultural promotion? The people who import and sell agro-chemicals, not the organic farmers, are the ones with the political influence. Still, healthy farming has its many fans and practitioners here.
In the background, the Catholic church in Sonadora provides the across-the-road landmark to find The Lazy Man’s Farm.
John and his assistant have been celebrating a new success in composting papaya trees.
Mother and son drop by for an English lesson.
Flowers and medicinal plants, too…
There is an ethic that goes along with this. You wouldn’t want a perfectly good planter go into a landfill just because it no longer serves its original intended use.
TEACHING — that’s the ticket.
Every well-appointed organic permaculture farm should have a wonder dog.
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