We'll start again then. Weird. Hi, Amy. payments. em. Yeah, pleasure.

Yeah. He's a farmer biodynamic farmer. Oh me. Oh, he was gonna say oh my god. Okay. All right.

We're talking now with john McGuire here inside pan on the, in the Northern Marianas Islands in his place. And he's got a small farm. And before we go on about this here, mango tree front, why don't you tell us a little bit about your farm like, how much you've got there and what's on it and see your dogs are there keeping your company? Go? Go ahead. Well, we Got a piece of land that's kind of sloped down down the hill and it was all kind of jungle you know, like, like what you see over there.

So I I just gradually put out little parts of the jungle and just started replacing it with things that I like to grow like mango trees, dragon fruit bananas like a type of grape fruit tree that's a great fruit tree there. Oh, hell no a tree. Um then I started up I started learning about grafting and air layering and then just kind of built it up over the years. I come home from school and work in the garden. This this tree has four types of mangoes on it as a Hayden it's, oh my god. You've done four graphs on this.

You've done three graphs on an existing mango, yeah, this, this is a graph here. It's hard to see where the graphs are now. Really he'll zoom in on that if I can. Sometimes you can see the line. Right? This is a Hayden branch.

And this branch is actually making fruit already. Okay, and then it has a Panama mango branch that I grafted on. So how long have these graphs been put in? That you did the graphs, they're all younger than 10 years younger than 10 years. And how long does it take in a mango for a graph normally to go ahead and fruit? Well, it's apparent is because some, some of the varieties come from if it's successful here.

If it's a variety take from here it produces quicker, but like this one I introduced from from Thailand. swing over although that's in the sun, they're yours but it had produced one fruit last year and it was like an amazing time mango. Okay, yeah, yeah the the time mangoes are Yeah. This started out as a local local seed, like a local mango and then I cut it off. I cut it off and then I put the branch on. Okay, like the branch on to it down there.

Yeah. Now that's a bit dark for us, but that's okay. We'll we'll doctor that actually, this is the this is where I spliced it on. But you know, it was a seedling when I did that. And this is how long ago again, probably eight years, eight years and then we've got this this tree. So folks if you're thinking of grafting, take heart with our successes to be reported here.

And we we of course have seen a lot of graph Done. They're in another farm in Nepal. And those are quite successful as well. Then, okay, pomegranates haven't done very well here. I mean, so fruits, you know, there's just, there's just not as successful in the tropical environment. Okay, no, that's in northern China.

Sure. In Spain, we had that there. Yeah, much drier. Yeah, sure. It's, um, game for all of it. And I'm sure this is gonna be valuable for folks.

This was like a cherry kind of a sour cherry, but for the tropics. It was pretty good. And then, and this is the mulberry tree. Which kind of mulberry there I don't know. They're like kind of right now. There's no fruits because they came out in the birds.

You know, they didn't have any fruit after the typhoon, right. So this was the first thing that came back. Okay, then there's a Ylang Ylang tree that you might have along the along. Yeah, this Wow, this is a tree but this is actually Ilan along the vine. And I thought I saw a yellow flower and walked by. Okay.

See it? I mean, they're really, they're really fragrant. It's not kind of like, like, like a banana. Well, so that's, yeah, that's right. So you've got this. You've got this twisted mix of a lot of different species in this in this cluster here.

Yeah, that's a flower. Okay. And important, medicinal, you know? Come along this way. I have pineapples, Some three year These are three year coconuts. They're great because they grew up off this tall, right?

And you can just walk up to it you don't have to wait forever. Yeah, okay. Question about the the pineapple here. Did you plant that with a with an existing fruit just with a top just cutting just put it right in soil? Yeah. How old was that cut?

Did you cut it in? Immediately bring it in. Or what did you do? I took off the heads of the pineapple. Yeah, I soaked them in water. Okay.

So the white roots came out. Okay, then then you just put it in you put them in so that's how we do the pineapples folks. Got it. Straight from the man himself on that. Okay. And then you can see after the typhoon that citrus tree there's dying.

Oh, you've got some beautiful. I wish these would show up a little better. Let me get let me get up the ISO on this or that is too just gorgeous. This is awfully familiar. What is this in this tub here? Is it just I've seen it so often.

Yeah. I've seen it so often and I can't put my finger on it. All right. Yeah, this thing's kind of cool. It's like a melting pot. And the ties, yes, these flowers to decorate their.

Right, you know, the little things they put in the water and then, but this attracts the butterflies for monarch. So you'll get monarchs coming in here. Wherever they come from, really either they're attracted to the monarchs on site pan. First I've ever heard of that. Okay, in a few years now might be thing as I'm growing That's right. Yeah.

We had coffee. That's too bad. The coffee I find to be fairly sensitive. Yeah. Too bad. This is a coffee then this Yeah.

Okay, so it is regrading a bit. They were really producing. Wow. How old were they before they started to produce just a few years? A few years. Okay.

Okay, folks, if you're addicts like addicts like me, plans some coffee plants at your earliest convenience. In a few years. If you are given it the right conditions, you'll have your own coffee. Imagine that possibility. Right on please continue what else you got here? apple tree.

Okay. That's the teak tree I was telling you about. Take my 10 years, right and then I'm hoping I'm hoping in the wet season but that's a 15 year growth. This tree that's about 10 years. That's a 10 year tree. They need to Yeah, they say they need 15 years before you can freakin harvest them.

Really and so why don't we harvest those like now? That looks good. Well you want to get it takes so long you want to get the most out of it. You can. Okay, wait five more years, maybe it'll double the amount of right raw material, but the wood itself now would be okay. I'm not sure actually I'm not mature enough.

All right. All right. What am I guava garden here? This was awful. seedless guava. They were like Thai they were like this pig.

Okay. We lost most of them but these two these two survived the typhoon and this was actually one of my favorite foods. Ha, ha, do you know what these are related to? The to the? The Vi Vi like you'll have in Hawaii, the strawberry guava? Or they're related in that their guava is good.

It's a different variety. Okay, so these are green. Yeah, okay, crunchy. It's kind of the apple of the tropics. Right? Okay.

So that's why those folks what have we got here? Uh huh. These are all my papaya seedlings and right, I'm getting these. These are dragon fruits. And what I do is I let them I stick them in wood. Mm hmm.

That water get out of there. I stick them in, in dirt and then see the the roots start to come out. Yes, then you can. Then you can go ahead and put it next year. trellis there's a lady I want to introduce you to the Thai woman that we've already put on this discourse if if this is going to be put on the course of she's got hundreds of dragon fruit. She said they will flower in July and she'll harvest in October.

And she has them stuck in, in in trunks of wood and then to house and she each one has got several it's just got a tire a rubber tire that is holding this cluster of of dragon fruit that is going into these. Yeah, it's really quite impressive thing that you could you can view if you go over there. It's not far it's not far from here at all. Yeah, I actually gave her those cuttings. Mia Yeah, we're doing that together. She you're just way ahead of me.

Okay. All right, but uh, yeah, I'm waiting. I lost my dragon fruit. farm but