St. Croix Agricultural Fair

Every year over the three day President's Day weekend, St. Croix has a huge Agricultural Fair. St. Thomas has an annual Ag Fair too, but it's nowhere near the size of St. Croix's. (We went to the one on St. Thomas our first year, but this year it was when I was in the hospital with appendicitis. My co-clerks bought us an ornamental pepper plant, and some baked goods, so we didn't miss out entirely.) The St. Croix Ag Fair includes people from all over the Caribbean who come to sell foods, spices, and crafts. [This photo is just one example of the many fruits that were on sale that we hadn't seen before.]

After hearing about the St. Croix Ag Fair for so long, we decided it was time to check it out. We waited too long to book a hotel - even the week before the fair the hotel receptionists were laughing at me when I asked if there were any rooms available. And then it looked like we waited too long to book transportation. We'd planned on the unreliable ferry, as it's cheaper ($90 RT) than the local commuter flights ($150-200 RT). But even the ferry was full. When I called them2 days before the fair started, I just got the machine which said"We're really busy so we're not answering the phone." Luckily I kept checking the Seaplane website and they added some flights at the last minute to accommodate the St. Thomian procrastinators like us.

Sunday morning we arrived at the Seaplane at 7:15 for our 8:00 flight,45 minutes early just as they request. They moved us to the 7:15flight which was about to depart! Flying the Seaplane is not like flying any other airline I've ever encountered in the US. First,there's no airport - it's just a building along the harbor that you go to for check-in. Second, there's no security to go through - just show the person at the desk your ID, tell them how much you weigh, let them weigh and take your bags, and they hand you your boarding pass. Then when your flight is called you walk down the dock and get on the plane. Depending on the plane you get, the seats may only come up to your mid-back. But it's fine since the forty mile flight to St. Croix is only 20 minutes.

We took a taxi to the Ag Fairgrounds. St. Croix (STX) really feels so different from St. Thomas (STT). It's a much larger island (84 sq miles on STX v. 32 sq miles on STT)) and less populated (around 40k on STX; 50k on STT). It's the flat island, though it still has some serious hills. (St. John is the really hilly one, St Thomas is more like St. John than St. Croix though.) St. Croix is also more laid back than St. Thomas. The work days on St. Croix are a little shorter too. Although, that could just be the rumor....

Because we got to the Ag Fair early, we had time to walk around and check out all the booths setting up and see the lay of the land before it got too hot. There were six components to the Ag Fair - 1) the very important food pavilion and food booths, 2) the regular booths, 3)farmers' market, 4) livestock pavilion, 5) the entertainment stages,and 6) the rides. It's a lot like a state or county fair, except the rides are only for the kiddies, as far as I know. (But that's okay because I've read enough newspaper articles about injuries on those rides here in the past year.)

Food is a major focus of the Ag Fair. We have tried lots of foods since we moved here, but there were still many foods we had never heard of that we encountered last weekend. Also there were foods we had heard of but hadn't had the opportunity to try yet. We started the day splitting a salt fish pate. A pate (pronounced paah-tay) is basically some meat, veggies, or fish inside fried dough. Terribly unhealthy, but delicious. Salt fish is popular here - fish is salted to preserve it, then soaked to remove the salt, and then usually cooked, unless it's "pick up saltfish" which isn't cooked but is made into something more like tuna salad and is eaten with crackers. After our first rounds of the grounds, we also had a johnny cake (just plain fried dough, a hint of sweetness) - often eaten as the bread with a meal; and a conch pate (say conk - you know, the thing that grows in a conch shell, those beautiful shells you can "hear the ocean" with), which was absolutely delicious! It had garlic in it, which is not a popularly used spice here. [This is a photo of Dave with a johnny cake and his carambola drink.]

Grenada is the "Spice Island" - it's fairly far down the Lesser Antilles island chain. Grenada was well-represented at the Ag Fair. [Here's a photo of their spice table.] Dave bought some cocoa sticks, and we bought some of the spices they're famous for - saffron was the best buy. One of the booths also sold fudge - we tried both coconut and ginger - it was fairly dry, but I suppose if it's too moist it would just melt in the heat.

We tried pumpkin fritters in the morning too - think pumpkin, flour,sugar, then fry it. (Are we sensing a theme?) Also, many people told me to try benye (ben-yay). I found some, but was disappointed - it tasted like greasy banana bread - probably fried. I looked for another booth selling benye but by the time other booths had it, I was stuffed. Dave and I did most of our eating before noon, and unfortunately didn't have room for any "real meals". Because of our poor planning, we missed out on the "conch water" (aka soup) and the kallaloo (a very green soup usually made with pork but sometimes seafood). I deliberately avoided the "goat water" (soup) and the oxtail. We did save room for desserts though!

In the farmers' market, we saw some men preparing sugar cane to be chopped up and sold in baggies. [Here's a photo of a man peeling it.] They kept saying "come back in 15minutes". An hour later (and many walk-bys later) it was finally available and we enjoyed chewing on the raw sugar cane, sucking out the sweet water and trying to avoid getting stabbed in the mouth with the fibrous remains. [Me with a baggie of sugar cane.] We also bought some cookie-type baked goods called "dried mattie" and "laba bad". The la ba bad was in the shape of a bar cookie, but it tasted similar to biscotti. The dried mattie was long and cylindrical and less sweet, though it was similar. I think we bought them both from the St. Kitts and Nevis booth (two islands making up the smallest nation in the Americas, I believe). We also bought some dried fruits called Juju - which we saw marketed as Jujube and Jojobe too. They tasted a lot like dried plums to me.

To wash down these fried foods and tasty desserts, we enjoyed homegrown bananas, sorrell drink and starfruit drink. Bananas that grow here are often referred to as "figs" - I think they're marketed as "finger bananas" in the states. Dave has a starfruit (carambola) tree on our deck which has made fruits twice. We bought it from the booth that had won "best carambola drink" the day before. We hadn't tasted sorrel before though. Sorrel is a red fleshy flower that is boiled in water to bring out the taste, then strained, and sugar is added to the drink to sweeten it. An alcoholic version is also popular around Christmas here. Dave bought some sorrel at the farmers' market so he could make the drink at home. He decided he likes it more like an iced tea without too much sweetener.

Later, when everyone else was lining up in the food pavilion for lunch, we got ice cream. Armstrong's is a local ice cream company that makes local flavors. At Christmas time they made guavaberry ice cream- there were ads in the paper notifying people that it was available at the ONE place that sells Armstrong's on St Thomas. I bought some and Dave and I loved it. Sadly, we were told it's only made at Christmas. But the ice cream truck had some guavaberry, which Dave chose easily. [See how happy he looks with the purple ice cream?] I tried the banana and soursop (a local tart fruit).

We didn't just eat at the Ag Fair though! We wandered through the livestock section which had lots of cattle, goats, emus, puppies,rabbits, chickens, and baby chicks. There were bands playing at various stages, including P'your Passion (pronounced Pure Passion) - one of the more popular bands on St. Thomas - they play lively reggae and soca. We'd heard them before on multiple occasions. Another stage seemed to have evangelists all day. Dave seemed to most enjoy the large variety of plants on display (and the guavaberry ice cream).

It was hot and we had seen everything we wanted to see, so we decided to head back towards Christiansted and check out the Fort. We tried to catch a taxi but they were all going the other way, or had some other explanation that we couldn't understand as to why we couldn't get in. (Most of the time we can understand what locals say, but sometimes the dialect is just a big communications barrier.) We joined a few people by what looked like a bus stop and hoped a taxi would stop. One stopped and was heading towards Christiansted. We've learned to always ask how much the fare will be before we hop on, though sometimes we can't quite understand the taxi driver's answer. I heard something like "two fifty" or "two fifteen". It was $16 for our trip out there, so we hopped on. Soon we realized this was not your average taxi, and perhaps it was like the dollar bus on St. Thomas. Dollar buses look like regular taxis here (large vans on STX), but they charge $1 or $2 and only go on certain routes. They're better than a bus system though because they will pick you up and drop you off anywhere along the route they travel. Some passengers were giving the driver coins, some dollars, and some didn't seem to pay at all. When we arrived near the Fort (pictured here), we paid $2.50 total and that was that. A pleasant surprise. More photos from the St. Croix Ag Fair are online here, and more photos from our exploration of the Fort are available here. We're heading back to St. Croix this weekend for a sprint triathlon and are excited to explore the island even more!