Pimento Picking

The pimento berries were a primary cash crop for Shaw Park Estate. This made it a prime and sometimes the only source of hard currency for many of the women and children living in the surrounding vicinities. I looked forward to pimento picking season, not just for the cash but as an opportunity to picnic in the bush, Jamaica style.

It was once thought that the pimento tree would only grow in Jamaica but now they are grown in Central America too. The tree itself was not particularly tall and has a distinct stark white trunk that evolves into very bushy but brittle branches. It blooms once a year with small white flowers which turns into small berries. These berries are harvested by hand while green then sun dried (which then looked like peppercorns) before being pounded into powder and sold internationally as the alluring spice called allspice. As a child, picking the green berries was my only opportunity to earn cash to buy the many necessities that a growing boy needs (kites, sweets and a Bulla cake or totoe or a gizada once in a while). Earning that money was not work though, it was part picnic, part education and part nurturing. Picking pimento was an occasion that you looked forward to all year.

The normal scenario was that having determined which trees were mature enough to be pick then a male and probably the only male there would climb the tree and break off the branches leaving the tree bare as if dying. The branches would be brought to a selected large shade tree where the women and children (the pickers) would be congregated. Everyone would have a selected spot and so would begin the process to selecting a branch and pulling the berries off the branch into a container. These containers would be emptied into crocus sacks and the number of sacks filled determined how much you would earn. Some of the better pickers had sacks all to them selves but as a child you would contribute to a sack and the amount you earned depended as much on you effort and skill as on the good judgment, memory and integrity of the adult owner of the sack to which you contributed; although I can’t remember ever feeling cheated; but such was the culture then that such a thought was practically unthinkable.

While you were picking a fire would be going and all the fixings brought from home plus available pickings would be cooked so that lunch would be this so special treat. Maybe it was just the atmosphere but those lunches at pimento picking time were special. It was not just what you had at home but a combination of the contribution from all the families and many would indulge in a little extra, on credit I am sure, in anticipation of the extra earnings. It was real basic food but I remembered it as mouth-watering and sumptuous, a pleasure you look forward to all year.

Then throughout the picking and the eating there would be the talking. In a culture where a child was suppose to be seen and not heard, pimento picking was one of the rare opportunities where a child could climb up the social ladder. Maybe because you were a full fledged contributor to the daily earnings it probably made a difference or because there were no adult male around to reestablish the ranking order but I think it was more an atmosphere thing, one that created camaraderie and nurturing rather than disciplining and ranking.. So for the brief period you were almost like an adult. You could add an opinion without meeting the surely eyes of an adult putting you back in your place. It was a chance to practice being a grown-up.

Picking pimento was not work it was more like a festival, a festival village style.

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