A visit to Platfield in St. Mary highlights both the beauty and the hardships of rural living. Rolling hills and lush vegetation provide stunning views and an abundance of ferns, philodendrons, and fragrant gingers, yet residents face challenges such as scarce water, reliance on roadside standpipes, and slow-moving infrastructure projects.

Published Saturday, August 24, 1974

Jamaica Places – Platfield: an agricultural district

By Alex D. Hawkes

On our trip for the Gleaner to Platfield, in the parish of St. Mary, Mr. Campbell and I were both saddened to see the vast majority of coconut palms either dead or dying along the way, due to the terrible plague of lethal yellowing disease.

We had gone this way before, on several occasions in the past, and found no such tremendous damage, so the disease is decidedly still spreading, a condition which we have found to obtain in many parts of this island, as in so many other parts of the tropical world.

Platfield lies in a steeply hilly area, with marvelous views here and there over lower hills and valleys on all sides. At many moist, secluded places, one can find numerous handsome ferns, philodendrons, jippi-jappas, and fragrant white gingers in grandiose array, and from our trek we brought back a few select plants to incorporate into my own gardens, where they seem to be doing remarkably well, though the difference in elevation is considerable.

Standpipes
This is an important agricultural district, with some citrus and plum trees, arrowroot, khus-khus grass, coco, pumpkins, and sweet corn, in addition to the customary tropical crops generally encountered almost throughout the entire parish—bananas, cocoa (chocolate), and the like.
Water is scarce around Platfield, despite the periodic rushing falls down the leafy glens, which on occasion wash out the roadway, an important one for this populous district. Most families rely on the scattered roadside standpipes, and the women transport their daily supply in buckets carefully balanced on their heads, or the heads of their very young children. I must mention here that on several occasions I have attempted to transport things balanced atop my head, with hilariously unsuccessful results, and can only believe that this comes from practice from very young years.
Road repairs and widening, and the laying of huge drainage conduits, are taking place on the main road which extends to Platfield, and Campbell and I were most interested to see this important work continuing even on an Independence Weekend—Saturday! How refreshing to see people actually labouring, when we are accustomed to the incredible laziness and inactivity being exhibited these days in the Corporate Area by the recipients of the KSAC’s crash programme for the unemployed.

A huge yellow bulldozer was doing strange things to an earthslide at one place near Platfield, and we had to wait until a lumbering old country bus came through, and then we continued on our way.

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