A few days ago, at the request of a friend, I visited the farm of land toiler Roberto Ricardo Alfonso, located between the neighborhoods of Las Brisas and Las Lajas, in the municipality of “Calixto García” in the province of Holguín.
Robertico, as everyone calls him, was born in Santa Inés, where while still a child he began to feel the rigors of working in the fields: “when I was eight years old I learned to milk cows, I got up every day at dawn and helped my parents until I had breakfast and went to school, when I arrived, they served us lunch and then back to the farm”.
This is what this jovial farmer, retired from the banking sector, always attentive and talkative, told us: “although the first hard work I did was milking a cow, as I told you, what I have always liked the most is to walk with the oxen team, which I learned to drive when I was a child, my father taught me to furrow and sow, I loved to walk in those tasks, with a cart carrying food for the animals, or food, fruits, everything that has to be done on a farm and that is what I still do today”.
Farmer from the municipality of Calixto García
Robertico’s first job was as a cook in boarding schools, then in gastronomic units in Buenaventura, then he went on to work as a guardian in the bank Banco Popular de Ahorro, in the aforementioned town, until his retirement, although he always remained active as a farmer in his property of about seven hectares.
Land, farmer from Holguín
I must confess that the friend who told me about the earthly beauty of this farmer was not mistaken, because there are very few crops that are not planted there: “I have followed the examples of the people from before, here there is almost every crop and trees, there is plantain – two varieties -, banana, sweet potato, yucca, yam, pumpkin, coffee, cucumber, cane, sour and sweet orange, coconut, guava, mango of various kinds, loquat, several bushes of avocado, papaya, and you see how the tomato goes, plus other seedlings so that the mash is not missing in the house and even to sell some bottles”.
Robertico’s work is worthy of praise, because in addition to the aforementioned, he has a flock of sheep, chickens, geese, several pregnant pigs, some pigs and the little cow that produces the white nectar for the desired coffee with milk in the early hours of each morning. Thanks to the friend who provoked my visit to the beautiful meadow of Roberto Ricardo Alfonso.
With information from Radio Juvenil / Translated by Radio Angulo
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