Cashew Cash Crop in Crooked Tree Village
The highly anticipated Crooked Tree Village Cashew Fest and Agriculture Show 2023 is scheduled to take place on May thirteenth and fourteenth. The event was first organized back in the early eighties by the first Belize Rural North Area Representative, the late Samuel Rhaburn. At the time, it was simply the Belize District Agriculture Show, held in a different village each year. In 1983, Crooked Tree Village hosted the event and from that the Cashew Fest and Agriculture Show was born. Four decades later, the annual event lives on. In tonight’s installment of Kolcha Tuesday, News Five’s Paul Lopez took a trip to Crooked Tree to learn more about the village, its annual festival and the importance of the cashew fruit to its residents. Here is that report.
Paul Lopez, Reporting
Crooked Tree Village, a small, Creole community tucked away in Belize Rural North, is rich in history and culture. Eight to twenty thousand years ago, small bands of hunters and gatherers relied on the diverse biological resources of the many bodies of water in this area, like the wetland environment found here. The land was then settled by the Mayas and later Europeans who brought with them African slaves to log timber. From logging camps established along the lower Belize River watershed, came the birth of the Creole culture, a varied mix of African and European ancestry. All these insightful historical facts are being preserved inside the Crooked Tree Village Museum.
Today, we are in Crooked Tree Village to learn more about one of the community’s most important fruit, cashew, and how this fruit has shaped a way of life over the last century. Meet Henry Westby, a cashew producer. He has been working with the fruit since childhood. Today, he is in his backyard preparing an order of cashew nuts for a customer.
Henry Westby
Henry Westby, Cashew Producer
“The importance of the fruit and the seed, it is a part of our livelihood; it is something we depend on every year.”
He broke down the process of taking the cashew seed from its raw form to the edible cashew nuts.
Henry Westby
“We normally wait till the cashew is ripe and falling off the tree and we go pick them up. Some people ring them under the tree, some people pick them off the fruit, pick them up, sun them for a couple of days. We roast them whenever we need to sell. We do the roasting part. Like I show you, the roasting part, you got to use the pine wood and the quarter drum, roast them and then, get the ashes also. This is the ashes from different trees you have to use to take off the oil. After that it is this process, the hardest process begins, the cracking.”
After each nut is cracked, individually, they are then placed in a metal pot to bake under fire until all the moisture is removed from the nut. From there, the seed’s outer layer is removed and it is ready for consumption. Westby has built a home, bought his vehicle and continues to provide for his family, through the sale of value added products derived from cashew. Annually, Crooked Tree Village hosts a Cashew Festival to celebrate the longstanding practice of cashew production and the livelihood it provides to eighty percent of the village’s residents. This year’s event is only days away and George Tillett, the chairman of the village, is on the ground making final preparations.
George Tillett
George Tillett, Chairman, Crooked Tree Village
“I was made to understand that cashew came here from the time of the Mayans and Indians that settled before the British. So, when the British came here they did find cashew on this island. The natives who were here use to harvest the seeds of the cashew and take them to Belize town to sell them wholesale. They didn’t do any processing. At that time it was two three cents for seeds. After that people start learning a way to process the nuts by roasting them and having them packaged off and now cashew has become a number one cash crop to the villagers. During the cashew festival, gates open at ten just like NATS where people come in and start setting up. Then at two o’clock we have official opening to open cashew festival. This year due to the generosity of BTB our keynote speaker will be Anthony Mahler the Minister of Tourism. After the opening the fun start, we have stuff like greasy pole, plating of may pole, cashew wine drinking contest, bitters drinking contest.”
As this community has evolved over time, the challenge that comes with growing this cash crop has increased. For the last three years Henry and Tillett has taken note of an alarming change in the fruit’s development process that is now threatening the livelihood of the village.
Henry Westby
“Some people come and take samples already because it looks like it is either a fungus or the drought and not enough water, and we are very concerned about it. I think there is some feedback on it. I heard one lady was saying that the trees probably were too close together, they have to limb the trees but I don’t think that is the case, casue I have my cashew farm and my trees are not touching each other, but they have the same problem like here.”
Notwithstanding the challenges currently being faced and the quest for answers, hope remains that work of turning the cashew fruit into value added products will live on for generations. As the knowledge has been passed on to Westby and Tillett from generations before, they are doing the same with others.
Henry Westby
“Somebody could go and pick up a half a bucket of seeds right now, it would take them an hour, you go roast it and you could get two quart of cashew seeds out of that. One person could do that in maybe a half a day and that is money in their pockets. So, small kids, bigger people, everybody is doing it. You would say it is where the money is.”
George Tillett
“Right now it is a very lucrative business. I could go out there and in one day I could pick myself a sack of cashew nuts. When I process that I am good for four hundred dollars. So, instead of going out there to work for somebody for fifty or sixty dollars a day when I could be in the comfort of my home on my own timing and go in the wild of the village and pick myself up a cashew seed and know I have four hundred dollars a day, I can only see this tradition moving forward.”
Crooked Tree Village is also home to over three hundred species of birds, a fun-fact that every villager you encounter will share, because they are just as proud of this as they are of the cashew products. Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.
