The organic allure of Ujima

A devotion to healthy living built and sustains the Ujima Natural Farmers Market.

The community of vendors at the Saturday-morning-to-afternoon showcase at the Hope Botanical Gardens — selling leafy greens, culinary herbs, goat dairy products, all-natural pressed juices, gluten-free pastries, breadfruit and cassava loaves, and much more — are all firm believers in eating organically. Their collective mindset and booth offerings tell the tale.

“When you buy Ujima, it’s a vote for sustainability, it’s a vote for organic products, and I feel at home here,” Yanique Taylor, a three-year-long Ujima vendor and proprietor of Bee Sweet Honey, told Food. “It’s a whole bunch of like-minded people that want people to eat healthy, want people to eat clean, and it’s a hub for that.”

The mild-mannered Taylor is standing under the white-tented booth space, shielded from the increasingly warming sun, as scores of customers are pouring in. Ujima has been based at the St Andrew garden venue since 2022.

We eye a noted reggae-soul singer, lawyers, retirees, expatriates, doctors, a local film director, and visiting dual-citizens among the diverse composite of patrons. Many of them, toting empty recyclable bags soon to be filled with farm-fresh buys, are faithful Saturday shoppers known to most of the vendors on a first-name basis.

The entrepreneurial desire to become a honey producer stung Taylor almost a decade ago.

In between customers popping by her booth to purchase jars of honey stacked on the table, the-then laboratory technician recalled, “It started in 2017 while I was doing my nine-to-five at Petrojam, I decided I wanted to do something else. I did my research and found there was a deficit in the honey industry, and Jamaica needed more beekeepers. There was also a childhood memory of seeing a neighbour in his backyard tending to his bee boxes in Mandeville, where I grew up. I remember watching him with some kind of reverence. I was fascinated. I didn’t know that memory planted some sort of seed,” Taylor explained.

“I wanted to go into beekeeping, so I went to the Apiculture Unit in the Ministry of Agriculture in Bodles, St Catherine. I got the training done, and then I got my boxes. I started off very small,” she shared of Bee Sweet’s beginnings, which she officially launched with her business partner and other half, Aaron Taylor, in 2019 at the National Baking Company’s annual Jamaican Made Christmas event.

The now full-fledged beekeeper who makes all-natural honey and such bee-based products as bee-infused herbal teas and beeswax salves and balms — all retailed at Ujima — has apiaries in Manchester, St Elizabeth and St Ann, the latter of which she currently operates from.

Also business-operational in the garden parish is Shelly Ann Stewart of Sista’s Farm, which she co-founded with her sibling Alicia in 2023, the same year she began her Ujima partnership in the capital city.

The sisters’ two-and-a-half-acre farmlands is located in Walkerswood, St Ann. “We farm leafy greens and produce different varieties of kale. We have Red Russian, dinosaur, purple and curly kale,” Stewart informed Food with boxes of verdant greens before her. “We also have dill, parsley, cilantro, Chinese cabbage, arugula, mustard greens, celery, bok choy, everything you can think of in greens. I do greenhouse farming ...we do less surface area in terms of what the greenhouse takes up, but we get more production because of the controlled environment.”

Business at this organic-focused Saturday market has scored thumbs-up from the young farmer.

“It’s been good. It’s nice to have an environment where like minds can come along, and also people who are health-conscious can get the produce they want. It’s in alignment with what I am about as I am into health and fitness myself,” Stewart said.

Big on natural eats is Phillip Lowther, whose two businesses, Asha’s Health & Wellness and Inna Season Bakery, are a hit with Ujima shoppers. Particularly so are his baked goods, which include special-ordered bread loaves made from breadfruit, sweet potato, and cassava. By the time of our arrival at the market at 9 a.m., all 32 loaves Lowther had baked the previous day had quickly vanished. More accurately, been picked up from those in the know of the doughy goodness coming out of his oven.

Also hugely popular are the patties he bakes at his Old Harbour, St Catherine home and brings weekly to market. “The patty crust is made from breadfruit, cassava and sweet potato. We have ackee, ackee and salt fish, jackfruit, jackfruit and lentil, and mushroom patties,” he detailed of the tasty options in the hot-box available to bite into. “Outside of the patties, we do coconut oil, moringa oil, castor oil, and there are times we do herbal soaps as well.”

Two booths to Lowther’s left is the Bailey family, owners of two-acre Happy Gate Farms, located in the salubrious climes of the Blue Mountains in the community of Woodford.

The family comprising farmer mother Bunny Jean Bailey and her sons-turned-part-time farmers, physiotherapist Tajay and web developer Javier, bought Woodford Market Gardens farmlands in 2018 and commenced their seven-year journey with Ujima that year.

“We took it over and rebranded it Happy Gate,” Javier disclosed. “We grow and sell a variety of salad greens and culinary herbs. We have 15 different types of lettuce, including Romaine, Lolla Rosa, deer tongue, and black seeded Simpson.”

There’s also other greens cultivated by the intrepid farming clan like celery and parsley. “We have about four different kinds of kale too, including curly kale, which is the more popular one. Persons usually get that for their green juice, and they can add it to their salad,” Javier shared.

The freshly-grown Bailey brand of veggies is on supermarket shelves such as Loshusan and is incorporated in dishes on the menu of well-regarded eateries. “We sell lettuce and other herbs to Tamarind. They get arugula and basil from us, so if we go to Tamarind and enjoy their curry, it’s because of Happy Gate.”

Across the grassfield, the L-shaped vendor layout of booths includes Byron Walker’s Ruby Goat Dairy stall, which had for sale: small bottles of goat milk, goat-milk yoghurt and goat-milk soaps, and goat-milk cheeses.

“I was born and raised in New Jersey, but I’m a legal resident here,” he volunteered, following our handshake introductions. “I have been coming here for 40 years, first as a tourist and then when my wife and I were approaching retirement, we were like ‘What are we going to do?’”

The Rock was their chosen home to settle in. But in doing so, the American couple were not ready to push aside their love of work just yet.

Making home on the north coast, Walker said, “We saw a lot of goats and it was like there is no dairy farm, there is no cheese, and so in a fit of madness, we said we’ll try that. Ruth was an intern at a dairy goat farm in the United States for preparation. Her background was a nurse, so she’s actually the spark plug to Ruby Goat Dairy.”

“We started with a dozen goats,” he explained of his Trelawny-based dairy business. “It grew and we peaked at about 75 animals, and then we realised that to grow anymore, where we were was going to be a problem, and we didn’t want to go up into the hills because of the logistics. So we started to outsource our milk. We would qualify certain farms and send our milking teams out to ensure hygiene, and [also] you need to cool the milk right away to keep it cold.”

An 11-year staple at Ujima, Walker said, besides here, his goat milk products are at Progressive Supermarkets and Loshusan. “We are moving into retail and have done some hotels but they can be a little more difficult, they take their time in paying you,” he shared.

Shedding light on how the trending alternative marketplace came to be, Nicola Shirley-Phillips, Ujima Natural Limited’s director, divulged that the Ujima Natural Farmers Market and Organic Growers’ Group was formed out of the St Thomas chapter of the Jamaica Organic Agriculture Movement.

“The Source Farm Community Development Institute facilitated its creation and development and was, for a number of years, the economic incubator, offering capacity building and technical support,” she elaborated.

It was back in January 2014, and “six farmers decided to start the Ujima Natural Farmers Market in a dusty parking lot in New Kingston where Earl’s Juice Garden once operated. The first natural and organic farmers’ market on the island was aptly named the Ujima Natural and Organic Farmers Market. ‘Ujima’ is a Swahili word and a Kwanzaa principle for ‘collective work and responsibility’”

Ujima Naturals Limited was officially registered in November 2020, and prior to its current Hope Gardens locale, operated at 22 Barbican Road for several years. According to Shirley, its ongoing success “is the result of nearly a decade of collaborative work among natural and organic growers, mainly in St Thomas. The market continues to grow, and organic farmers from across the island use the market as one of their main sales outlets.”

In terms of what’s to come, she told Food, “Ujima will be working on the distribution and working with more farmers to shift their farming practices to organic to fill the demand. We had started another Ujima Market in St Ann, but the location was not appropriate, and hence we are looking for another location on the northern side of the island.”

lifestyle@gleanerjm.com

Editor's Note: This story has been corrected to report thatSista's Farm was co-founded in 2023, not 2013 and Bee Sweet Honey is spelt Bee Sweet Honey, not Be Sweet Home.