Vanilla Farm

We’d stopped at a vanilla farm previously, but it had been closed, so we went there again with my daughter who is visiting. This time the gate was open. The lane took us through an orchard-like setting, past neat rows of trees that were draped with thick vines. As we stopped, a farm worker signaled for us to follow him into the large gift shop – or was this someone’s living room? He went down a hall, then came back and indicated that we were to follow him. I was last, and when I entered the far room, Pecos and my daughter were standing over a woman who was lying in bed. Welcome, sit here, she said, patting the bed. Pecos looked extremely uncomfortable with this idea, so she told us to pull up a few chairs.

This finca owner, Charlotte, had fallen a few days ago and fractured her hip. She seemed glad to have company and talked nonstop, telling us that she lives six months in her Canadian home and six in Costa Rica. She raises vanilla, pepper, hibiscus and cocoa, which she sells at farmers’ markets in both countries.

I asked, would she have any vanilla plants for sale? Charlotte said that she was not offering plants for sale this year. We visited for a little while and learned that her friends live five kilometers away from our finca. She asked us about our experiences in Costa Rica and then suddenly said she would sell me a few vanilla vines. But first, she insisted, I must learn how to hand-pollinate the vanilla orchid correctly, as she had been taught years ago from an old man in Mexico. Charlotte had bought thirty vanilla plants from him after he was satisfied that had mastered this time-honored skill.

I had announced months ago that I intend to have cultivated plantings of the vanilla orchid and other spices on our finca – perhaps to generate later income – and here was the opportunity for a firsthand demonstration!

Charlotte called to her worker to bring a few vanilla flowers and a long needle to the bedroom. She then carefully opened the long white petals to reveal the pollen sac, which resembles a tiny closed purse with yellow dust on it, barely visible. She took the needle and gently lifted up a tiny flap on it. She then touched the underside of a folded-over stamen located under this sac. The stamen sprang up and touched the open purse. Charlotte then gently pressed the tiny purse closed with her finger tips.

I was enchanted! Without assisted pollination, the orchids would continue to grow large flowers but few fruits would form in her vanilla vineyard.

True vanilla comes from the specially cured fruit, or bean, of this particular orchid vine. The fruits, or vanilla beans, are long, thin fleshy pods with thousands of tiny fragrant seeds embedded in the pulp. The traditional process for vanilla beans requires a series of steps that take months. The pods must be picked before fully ripe, then put in the sun. For one month the sun baths are alternated with a process called sweating, where pods are bundled up in blankets and put in dark closets or boxes to seal out all light. After another month of drying out of the sun, the pods are then stored for a few more months to develop. This procedure produces the fine flavor of real vanilla and explains why vanilla beans are so expensive. Artificial vanillin, vastly inferior, is made from wood pulp.

I practiced the pollination process on a few flowers. Satisfied that I’d learned correctly, Charlotte called to her worker to cut five vanilla and five peppercorn vines for me. She would also sell me 10 vanilla beans. She hauled herself into a wheelchair and rolled to her kitchen, fragrant with freshly-processed pure cocoa, where she asked me to take a large jar of vanilla beans from the cupboard. The sweet scent of vanilla mixed with the chocolate – both scents stronger than any I’d ever experienced from either, and very heady.

Charlotte wished us well for our upcoming return to the U.S., and we promised to visit when we return to Costa Rica next year. She insisted that we tour her vineyard before leaving. Thick-leaved, large vanilla vines with shiny round leaves sent out roots from the stems to cling to tree trunk supports. Pepper vines curled thickly around and around their supports and dangling beads of peppercorns hung just over our heads. Ten-inch cream and purple trumpet flowers – reina de la noche, or angel of the night – hung from eight-foot shrubs, and hibiscus, camellia and bougainvillea flowers were buzzing with blue, green and purple hummingbirds. It was a true paradise of exotic tropical spices and flowers.

Coming home, the scent of vanilla filled our vehicle. Marcos will plant the vines on our finca and tend them for us. When we return next year, our vanilla plants will be in bloom, ready for pollination. 