The Foundation bought the farm 1995. It is flat with fertile soil, situated between two rivers, the General and the Pacuar, which is why the place is called “Juntas de Pacuar” (Pacuar Meeting Place). It was previously used for tobacco and maize production for many years by the brothers Fernández Cordero. We called the farm Santa Juana (Saint Joan) after Rosemary’s mother Joan Sylvester Bradley, who supported the Foundation’s projects very enthusiastically in its first stages. She was a librarian. For this reason our Small Farmers’ Communication Centre will have a library with a data base on marketing of rural products and an Internet service.
SHEEP FARMING AT SANTA JUANA
We currently use the farm for producing sheep. Sheep meat is not consumed much by Costa Ricans, but demand is increasing for good quality lamb. The most commonly used breed of sheep does not produce very high quality meat, so we have started to improve the quality of our sheep with a Dorper ram.
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DORPER RAM AND LAMBS |
SANTA JUANA AGRO-INDUSTRIAL PLANT
We laid the first foundation stone of our agro-industrial processing plant in 2006. First we built a seed processing plant in order to process grass seeds using the patented method Rosemary developed called Speedygerm.
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CONSTRUCTION OF THE SEED TREATMENT PLANT |
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MACHINERY FOR PLANTING AND HARVESTING STYLOSANTHES GUIANENSIS (A TROPICAL FORAGE LEGUME) AND MAKING FEED PELLETS |
In 2011 we constructed a small chocolate factory inside a container, and started to produce chocolates which we will shortly be selling on the website www.chocoprisma.com.
02/07/2013
