Twenty-seven years ago, Julie Bryson-Hing walked out of a restaurant job after one dispute too many with her boss. She first considered opening a restaurant of her own but balked at the overheads and turned instead to farming.

“So, I go to check my sister… and she was saying to me I could plant a bag of Irish potato. And then I plant it, and then I go to my stepfather land, and I plant some yam. And from there, that's where I start farming,” Bryson-Hing recalls.

Today, she does more than get by. She runs a multisite agricultural enterprise spanning Spaldings in Clarendon and both Pike District and Mandeville in Manchester. Across these plots she grows yam, sweet potato, Irish potato, cabbage, sweet pepper, and hot pepper.