Extension Day

On Thursday of last week Jesse and I went touring.  Jesse is the recently retired head of the Ministry of Agriculture Plant Pathology Division, and is a very neat guy.  His daughter is a member of the University of Mauritius Faculty of Agriculture.   Jesse runs a very large hydroponic vegetable farm, and he is one of the guys trying to get this renovation of the football stadium at Curepipe going.  We drove to his family farm at Belacava, which now overlooks one of the fancy resorts that ring the island.  This all is on the west side of the island, north of Flic N Flac.  We also visited the resort/golf course, as one of the guys who runs the golf course there took my short course, and they wanted a visit to check out the greens.

One of Jesses' greenhouses.  He grows tomatoes and cucumbers.

Jesses' family home.  A caretaker lives in the two habitable rooms, to prevent theft from the property.  The view from that open third floor is spectacular.

Jesse on the right, and one of his employees on the left.  That gentleman is Jesses' shipping manager, who collects the produce and gets it to the stores with whom they have contracts.

Now on to the golf course.  from the third floor of Jesses' house you can see this resort and golf course.  Jesse told me that as he grew up this was his and his brothers' play fields, before the resort was built in the 1980s.   Here we are walking on the hotel grounds, on our way to see a sodding project.

The bermudagrass sod.

I took this to show the palm tree growing inside the putting green, pretty much a 'no'.  They want to completely renovate the greens, and, frankly, they really need it.

A view of Belacava from the hotel.

At the spa, of which they are justifiably proud.