so far in this season of Rediscover St. Croix we've done a whole lot of hiking exploring prisons that not too many people have a chance to explore but trust me all of that walking takes its toll the crew and i need a little rest so today we're going to take it easy at the marketplace highlighting a few items you probably don't know about or haven't seen in a while we're also going to visit with mr errol chichester who's going to take us on a tour of a local farm that has a large variety of foods not commonly found at the grocery store and today's show would not be complete without highlighting one of the biggest food events in the territory of course i'm talking about the mango melon so sit back relax and take it easy while me and the crew go shopping for some produce the farmers market is the place where you can find a variety of locally grown goods each saturday hundreds of residents flock to this estate La Reine establishment to see what produce they can find to put in their pots or bowls from coconuts to plantains to local lettuce if it's grown on island it's sure to be sold here at the farmers market it's safe to say that the weekend market visits are part of the cruzan tradition it's where you run into friends get updated on events and at times even catch a sermon there is going to be a wedding in heaven and you are invited but to me the main reason for coming to the farmers market is to find that fruit or vegetable not sold at the local grocery stores i'm here with aberla did i get that right yes okay and i saw some really interesting things in your booth now i know the mangoes the avocados but could you tell me what these fruits are right here i've never seen them before what are they and what are they used for and describe them to me this one is called black sapote or chocolate fruit it really looks like chocolate and even tastes like chocolate when you make a milkshake and this one is called java apple java apple or wax jumbo okay this one is egg fruit okay and egg fruit also like black sapote you can make a milkshake or you can just eat it some people just cut it and eat it okay what can you use this one the wax bamboo is like an apple you just eat it like an apple yeah but if you want to you can put it in a salad they are very crispy and refreshing not very sweet but they're just nice and crunchy nice you can where can you find these foods on the island this is a everything you see here is on my farm i i draw all this plus many many i have about 30 to 40 different varieties of fruit trees how hard is it to grow these foods because i know you don't normally see them in the local grocery store you know i'm sure they take a lot of work to grow it is really not that difficult it's just you have to know what they are and these are tropical fruits that means if you go around equator subtropical tropical equator you can you can find all these fruits because they grow in in the tropics so it might look like we have some people haven't seen it at all here yeah but but but uh they grow here and this is what i did i i bought some of them from florida most of these things grew in florida so some of them i propagated myself plus many many others i don't even know about because there are hundreds and hundreds of tropical floats all over the world now i see here the texture of this is a bit different yeah the reason why it's called egg fruit is if you look at it it looks like egg yolk yeah does it taste like egg no right no no no no no no okay not sweet it's sweet some people love it well i am really interested in china i want to buy one um but while i try this we're gonna go and look at some some footage we took while touring with mr arrow to chester on his local farm take a look and when i say his farm i mean aberra bobola farm five acres of land covered by tropical and sub-tropical fruit trees mr bobola wasn't available to take us on this tour but mr errol churchester of the department of agriculture filled in to show us what this farm contains and first up on the tour the egg fruit i just bought this tree is called um egg fruit and there are several different types in terms of shape color sweetness texture and that type of stuff some people know this as canistel and it's called egg fruit because the fruit when it's ripe the inside has a consistency of the yolk of a boiled egg as you break the fruit apart it looks very similar to a boiled egg and the consistency is just the same this fruit over the past three or four years have been very sought after in the farmers market and La Reine um people make drinks out of it they make milkshakes some people eat it fresh out of hand and um i'll show you what some of the riper and larger fruits look like but as you can see these are some of the green ones here they start off green and when they're ripe they're fully golden yellow well as i said this is this is egg fruit the one on my left it's not mature it's not ripe but the one on my right as you can see the color has changed and it is a nice yellow fruit and it still needs to ripe maybe another week or so and these are mature uh big fruits and again if you don't know your fruit your trees if you don't know your trees properly from a distance this could look like a mango tree because the leaves are very similar to mango the shape of the leaves are very similar to mango but this tree has quite a few on and they they produce profusely they produce a lot of fruits mespel is a native fruit um and many of the trees the older trees that we have had are pretty much been pushed down due to development and stuff so there isn't much um older mespel trees around there a couple that are maybe i would say 50 60 70 maybe up to 100 and change years old those are some of the older ones but most of the mespel that we had in the past most of the trees are gone and we're just trying to preserve them now and this gentleman has a number of varieties in this particular planting mespel comes in different size shape color texture and they go from i would say smooth to very grainy almost like granulated sugar like brown sugar in terms of texture and some of them are very smooth velvety smooth that's the flesh i'm talking about uh they come in size from maybe maybe as small as a silver dollar to as large as a mommy apple okay this fruit is called um sapote or mami sapote or in santa domingo and some of the other places sapote or just mami this is totally different from our local mancipoto mami apple as we call it this fruit comes about the size that i'm looking at now this is about maybe four or five inches the fruit comes much larger maybe two or three times the size of the existing fruit that's that i'm touching now the it's similar to a mespel on the inside it's nice and smooth the flesh is orange in color and the seed is similar to mespel seed but much larger this fruit is also eaten fresh out of hand it is used in milkshakes and juices and that type of stuff i like it uh prepared when it's ripe peeling it slicing it freezing it and then taking it from the fridge removing individual slices and just consuming it like that it's like a frozen fruit um again this fruit for many of us because it's not of some common virgin islands it's a little difficult to tell when it's mature how to how i tell is i would just go and pinch like that if it's still green that means it's not full it's not mature if it's pink or orange then you know it's mature and you could you could pick it and put it on your counters so that you could ripe there is much more to see on this farm but for now let's go back to the farmers market and see what and who we can find there bump into my friend gilbert from stanley and the ten sleepless knights tell us what you like about the farmers market and what you come to buy and your favorite thing about the market well the market is so good because everything is fresh and it's better to eat fresh to stay away from the doctors so once you eat them fresh you stay away from all those sickness.

now the market is relatively small it can get crowded pretty quickly it can also get loud making it hard to hear yourself at times but it's all part of the experience of going to the market now at the farmers market you can find a wide variety of local foods that some of you know about some you may not you know you see here at the mango a lot of people know about the mango and tomatoes and even avocado but did you know that there are many types of avocados grown locally here in the virgin islands mr errol chester will give you a little bit more about that while i continue okay this is avocado which i think everyone knows this variety is called palak it's a very nice creamy thick flesh that flesh about three quarter of an inch up to an inch this fruit comes to about three to four pounds very very very beautiful avocado i always recommend if anyone wants a purchase of a avocado tree from the department when it come by i always recommend paula because it's a nice fruit it's nice texture it's what i consider the julie of avocado in that it stays shot it's more spreading than upright and as you know julie trees uh have a tendency to spread rather than going upright again there are several different varieties of avocado and you have pollock you have wilson popino you have salmon you have choquette i mean there are numerous varieties um there's another variety called wilson popular which folks tend to like a lot because it's it's it's very sweet it's very uh sticky and it's a big fruit the fruit will come up to like 16 17 inches long and it has a very small seed at the base of the fruit so um that's one has becoming very popular now there's also with some um maca's pumpkin which is an avocado comes up to like four or five pounds okay this is the avocado i was talking about when i said wilson popeno they're very long avocado and um sweet beautiful texture i mean very nice avocado that's one of the ones that i also recommend very frequently um as you can see how long these ones are they they could get like i said 15 16 inches long sometimes even longer and they they the seed would normally be just a very small seed and that's one good thing with this avocado that the seed is very small so you don't have to worry about um because of the and it's not very thick avocado because it's very thin you don't have to worry about the a large seed and you're losing a lot of the um product because of the seed size avocado just like mango and not chew to type meaning that if you plant a seed of a pollock you're not going to get a potluck so in terms of named varieties i would say we might have about 20 but however there are a lot of other types of avocado varieties that was i guess developed from planting seeds this is the breadfruit and as you know breadfruit i think every carribbean island has breadfruit and um again these are female breadfruit they say well female breadfruit well yes there's female and male if you look on this side there is um this is the male flowers and this wouldn't be a bad food okay but these bread fruits um not to be confused with bread nut uh maybe there are many people who don't know the difference bread knot has a little more not spines but um bumps and on on the surface um breadfruit is very common you're going to farmer's market on saturdays just about everybody has breadfruit around this time now breadfruit are coming in um we normally have breadfruit year-round but certain time of year for example now until the next three to four months we'll have endless bread fruits around and breadfruit could be consumed boiled roasted fried in ju in drinks and i mean there's so many different things that could be done with bread fruit um very diverse fruit did you know that some say the first lineage of breadfruit trees came from saint vincent according to chester the caribbean island is littered with breadfruit tree another interesting fruit on this farm is the jackfruit these fruits that you're looking at now are very small and i said very small they they could come up to like a hundred pounds in size and they have just when i say just maybe within the past 10 years been introduced into the virgin islands they grow in asia a lot i think they grow a lot in jamaica also and this fruit you could consume everything on the inside you could consume the seeds roasted or boil and but primarily though the main focus of this fruit is the flesh on the inside the flesh on the inside is just as yellow as the egg fruit is golden yellow and very very sweet that's another food that i bring to work and then my my co-workers tell me that it's too sweet and it's many individuals compare it to pineapple the flavor and the texture it's a very very sweet very nice fruit and as you can see it bears and bunches and it bears on the trunk and you would know that you would have to have a very strong tree to hold his fruits up but i've i've seen jack fruit produce but i've never seen so many in one particular place look how many fruits we got about what two four six eight ten twelve fourteen six almost 20 and that's one area and there's a couple other fruits up top but um that's a good concentration of fruits here i've never seen anything like that okay this fruit this should be looking at is called uh chocolate fruit or black sapote and it's called chocolate fruit because the inside of this particular fruit when it's ripe when it's mature is the color very similar to to um chocolate it's a very soft fruit when it's ripe when i say soft i'm talking about mushy soft very soft and um it's almost like baby food you know those um the food that comes in a small jars and stuff so it's very soft when it's ripe on the inside and you could make drink you could make um milkshakes makes a beautiful drink this is a small fruit this the different varieties i see this fruit a little more along this flat type also and the fruits could come up to a pong in size so this is a pretty small fruit and this is not native to the virgin islands this is this was brought in and i think mr bulbula has about maybe five or six different types on his farm now here is an interesting fact according to chichester many of the fruit trees we've seen so far have a mind of their own when it comes to bearing fruit some trees change season others bear all year round we have always had trees bearing off season and stuff but a couple of us have absorbed that after hugo it's it seemed to be more pronounced in that the fruits uh the the um production schedule is off somewhat other fruits that can be found here are guavas pomegranate papaya and the seven local apples you do know the seven apples right well if you're not sure we'll have mr chichester describe them quickly this fruit is called kaimito or star apple or kaimit it's um very sweet fruit the inside is almost like jello gelatinous it has this um um very this the flesh is pretty much transparent there are a number of fruits which we call anona a-n-o-n-n-e and they include the sugar apple soursop custard apple il alma rolina atimoya cherimoya they are all unknowns and judges a scientific name for them and they all have similar configuration on the inside in terms of the seeds and how the the flesh is around the seed this is a very immature sugar apple and this sugar also comes in different color there's a proper one i don't know if you guys have seen the proper one but it also there's also a proper skin the outside is purple and the inside is also purple it looks like a soursop but it's not this one um this is um another it's it's the pond apple pond when this fruit is ripe the outside is just it's i guess it has a similarity to the egg fruit when the egg food is ripe the outside is totally yellow and the inside is totally yellow when this fruit is ripe the outside is totally yellow and the inside is also very totally yellow it is not a fruit sought after by many because it it it doesn't have much it's again it's a it's a no-no so it looks just like the sugar apple on the source up on the inside and on the inside however the flesh around the seed is that much flesh around the seed it's very dry it's very minimal it's very thin flesh around the seed it has lots of seed and the taste is not as sweet as the sugar apple or soursop.

this is our local mommy which we call mommy apple it doesn't have any fruits i don't know we should have futon so you could get a shot but i guess most people know mommy as a round mesper-like looking fruit with a leathery skin brown and and the inside is um yellow and you also have a rough bronze seed on the inside this is a very soft fruit it's called melee apple pomerank some people also call it water apple there goes another apple but the fruit is very soft and the birds love them you have to compete just about i mean all these fruits here have been um eaten by the by the birds and you just have to be more determined than the birds to get in this is wax jambu or wax apple and it's in the same family as melee after the one that which the red fruits i just showed you a little while ago and this is how the flower comes out to this nice little um um projections here but the melee apple these projections is red and it's it's more vibrant in terms of color this is the flower here and this tree also produced endless fruits in in in in um in clusters like kinep so there you have it most of the local apples grown on the island the only one missing from the list the bell apple this one this is kidney and all these are little well i i personally just use them to eat but some people make different jams and the juice different things you know okay are you always here at the market telling these mangoes always at the market but not every time with the man i love me some mangoes and you know the best place to find mango right here right here in the market but also one of the biggest events here in in the virgin islands the mango melle.

oh yes that's true for the past 12 years the saint george's botanical garden has been the site where people can learn about everything mango held every july the mango melle event has attracted visitors from all over the region to experience the many varieties of mangoes and other fruits the island has to offer we have over 75 varieties of mangoes they range from the very small to the large kent and kidney mangoes so you could see just from the varieties that we have over 75 and the islands can could produce over 100 varieties of mangoes mango mele and tropical fruit festival is the celebration of our foods that we produce in the virgin islands and we have this first of all because we want to emphasize the production the growth of our tropical foods and how we could add value to all these foods that we produce especially during the summer months the tropical fruits that we have in the virgin islands range from our sea grapes to our bell apples the lucas the oh citrus the shadow we have some unusual fruits like the mommy apple that's mommy supported of course our sugar apples i mean there are lots of fruits that you don't normally people don't see but the islands produce and no mango mele would be complete without the very popular mango eating contest the type of mangoes these contestants are eating is a very sweet tommy atkins it's definitely a messy contest but for these participants is a small slice of mango heaven i had a great time this morning at the farmer's market i got me some food i'm going home to enjoy it but make sure you come down to the farmers market and learn more and explore about our local food so whether you're just enjoying food or a bright sunny day in the aisle always remember to cherish your home this beautiful island most of all cherish each other we'll see you next time you