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Milking goats
Somehow we were on a guided tour of Barbados, the guests of Ted Hoad, eighty-four, third generation islander, the eldest of nine children, and retired biscuit baker. It was an unusual tour, more a potted journey through Ted’s life, all at speed and generally from a distance; the place where he and seven of his siblings were born, the church he was christened in, the house on an east boast beach where he and his bride honeymooned, the home in which he lived with his wife for twenty-something years, the site of his parent’s family home in Bridgetown, the place, now a bank on Broad Street, where his grandfather set up a bakery downstairs and his family lived upstairs, and where he used to play, swim and bike when he was young.
We flashed by the occasional tourist highlight (if you look over there as we go past you might be able to catch a glimpse of this or that, we’d stop if we had time, but first I want to show you where I won a game of marbles two weeks before I got married in 1948).
We met Ted a fortnight ago when having dinner with several of Fleur’s colleagues who live in what could be described as a cluster of units inside the perimeter of the Rockley Golf Club. Ted is a neighbour and wandered over and we inadvertently ended up inside his unit looking at an impressive, huge reproduction of Broad Street showing his grandfather’s business with his uncle leaning out over an upstairs balcony, and photos of his family, most of whom it seemed have abandoned the island and live in far-flung parts of the globe. Ted’s wife died not long ago after sixty-one years of marriage; he was lonely and insisted on taking us for a car trip. We agreed.
But if we thought this was to be where the real Barbados was revealed we were wrong. “What’s he name of that of tree,” Kaelene asked him. “Ohh, if you hadn’t a asked me dat I woulda known”, he replied. “What kind of birds are those?,” we asked. “Ohh I don‘t know, we never used to have then here when I was young,” he replied, “I think they must a got blown here in a storm and never went home.” Then, “What brought your grandfather from southern England in 1856 to set up a bakery in Bridgetown?," an interesting one we thought. “Ohh dat’s a good question, but I never rightly thought about it.”
Later in the Barbados Yacht Club (where he has been a member since age eighteen) for lunch any number of people greeted Ted warmly by name. “Ohh dat’s’s the trouble, all of these people, dey say hello, but even if you gave me a thousand dollars I still couldna tell you who dey is.”
Despite that there were some interesting things we learned though. The sugar cane industry is in decline, thwarted by overseas experts who came in, ignored the locals, and restructured, reducing the number of working mills from around 100 to two, but locating them in the hills away from the main growing areas and across the other side of the island from the port and main towns. As a consequence, local farmers, sick of paying the new, huge transport costs are increasingly abandoning the industry.
Then there are the houses. Small wooden houses which just sit on stones or rocks so that, when their owner changes jobs, the house can be picked up and moved as well, this practice having started when workers moved between plantations. If the house was secured by way of permanent foundation, it became the property of the landowner.
Undoubtedly the most fascinatiing, Ted’s gift for predicting major weather events. The appearance of yellow butterflies has caused him to accurately ignore many a hurricane warning, and the foliage on a certain type of tree has allowed him the give drought advice to his brother.
And his brother’s place was our primary destination we realized. Just down the road from the Morgan Lewis Mill (a wind-powered sugar mill which was the only one of its kind left in Barbados until it was hit by lightening), Richard Hoad milks goats (and writes occasional satirical columns for various media). Not that Ted can understand why his university-educated brother and his wife, a former Barbados Scholar (dux of the island), would give away the opportunities of education to farm in the remote north-east, but it is clear that Richard and his family just love it, and equally clear that Ted is immensely proud of his twenty-something years younger brother. We were there for milking time, these are goats of Swiss and French origin, and so tame and well-mannered they virtually milk themselves. “This is Mr and Mrs New Zealand, I can’t understand a word they say” Ted said by way of introduction before Richard got down to banter about our dairy products flooding the market, Anchor cheese being about the only cheap commodity on the entire island. Not that he is too concerned though, he cannot keep up with the demand for his goats’ milk, and he was very impressed by the attractiveness of the young Kiwi woman who recently graced the cover of Dairy Udders International or some similarly titled magazine. Even more impressed he was when we told him that all New Zealand women were like that. Not a dud among them.