Day 5: Angel Portalatin's Plantain & Vegetable Farm

A different day and a different farm, this tim in the central part of the island. Today we visited Angel Portalatin's plantain and vegetable farm Portagro. It was a real treat for us because not only were we able to see a succesful large scale farm in Puerto Rico but we were also able to try out a lot of their produce :) By the end of the tour we were stuffed from the mangos, tamarins, honeydews, cantelops and watermelons. Yup we sampled them all. To top it all off Angel treated us all to some awesome local treats for lunch!!

Angel Portalatin

Angels farm is actually divided into two sections in different locations of the town. The first section we visited was the plantain farm which is 62 acres where plantain and papaya is grown. There are four employees that manage the farm but during intense rains more employees may be needed to control weeds. The plants recieve nutrients through a drip irrigation system controlled at central location.

plantain field
plantains
papaya
drip irrigation system

The second part of Angels farm is about 15 minutes away and there Angel grows many various vegetable and fruit crops on 156 acres. While he owns the plantain farm this one is leased from the government. This farm is also under drip irrigation for nutrients and water. The produce from this farm was excellent!! :D

fruit and vegetable farm
fresh cantelope

After touring the farm and learning about it we were taken to the processing and packaging area located at the fruit and vegetable farm. Here we given samples of watermelon seedless/ and regular and cantelope.

Today I decided to do a video as part of my post.

Day 5: Angel's Plantain & Vegetable Farm from jbarbs on Vimeo.