2024-03-02 23:52:16
Elisabeth Kapitánová and her husband Petr came to La Palma for the first time six years ago. The reason was their two daughters. They were born prematurely and doctors did not recommend them to go outside during the winter months. “I knew that if I was alone at home with the children, I would go crazy,” recalls 29-year-old Elisabeth, immediately showing her active nature. They spent more than a month on the Canary Island, and when they returned to the Czech Republic, thoughts of a sunny and positive place remained in them.
“Suddenly, we noticed how everyone in the Czech Republic is frowning and always complaining about something,” recalls Elisabeth in the premises of their finca, or small farm in the Palmer village of Montes de Luna. In addition to dragon fruit, they also grow mango, avocado, papaya, passion fruit, pineapple, acerola, pitanga and carambola. “When we found out that a house in La Palma costs less than a studio apartment in Prague, the decision was made,” says the mother of two daughters. Originally, they only spent part of the year on the island, the final decision to move came with the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were deciding whether to keep a cottage in the Giant Mountains or a house in La Palma. So La Palma won. At the same time, my husband’s company stopped doing well, so we started thinking about what else we could do. And that’s where the idea of farming and importing was born fruit,” describes Elisabeth, who, like her husband, had never worked in agriculture before.
They negotiated hands and feet
Surprisingly, book restoration, which she originally studied, helped her in her new field. “When you restore a book, you must find out all the information about it in advance. You must also not introduce your innovations into it, but respect its origin,” explains Elisabeth. “It was the same at the beginning of our business. When we decided to work with the soil and crops, we found out everything beforehand from local farmers,” says the young woman, who attributes the success of their one-year-old business to the systematic approach.
Their mentor is the local farmer Esteban Lorenzo, who passed on all the experience to the couple. “He took the soil from our garden in his hand and declared it good,” laughs Elisabeth. “We didn’t know Spanish, we negotiated with our hands and feet and possibly with a translator on our mobile phone. But the important thing, that is, that it’s good land, we said to ourselves,” he laughs.
They support local farmers
Thanks to Esteban, they came into contact with other farmers and together they founded the Association of Growers. Thanks to her, they began to learn about the problems of local farmers. Since one of them was not using their production, Elisabeth decided to buy fruit from farmers and import it to the Czech Republic together with fruit from their garden. “These are people who have been farming for several generations. And suddenly here I am, telling them what to grow so that people will buy it, and how to prepare the fruit for us,” says modestly Elisabeth, who is the youngest farmer on the island.
Today, he buys fruit both from two dozen small farmers and from the largest organic finca, that is, a smaller farm, on Nogales Island. It sells Canarian fruit and typical products under the Ostrov chutí brand via its website, at farmers’ markets, food festivals and through the Rohlík portal. In addition to supporting local farmers, Kapitáns use their brand to point out business practices that occur in the fruit business.
“Our fruit is more expensive because it is organic and we ship it in a ripe state so that it has all the necessary vitamins in it. The usual procedure is that the fruit is put in a curing bath to last the journey, and finally it is juiced to has ripened. The fruit thus lacks vitamins that are formed in it during ripening,” explains Elisabeth. “In order for the entire trade to be fair for the farmer himself, it is impossible for an avocado to cost 30 crowns,” describes the entrepreneur, who sells it on the website for less than a hundred crowns.
She and her husband also initiated in the Growers Association to apply for a European grant within the organization to finance fruit dryers in order to reduce its waste. All farmers from the island can use it freely.
Office in the morning, garden in the evening
The company imports fruit to the Czech Republic by air, stores it in Jindřichov Hradec, where Elisabeth is from, and then distributes the orders via couriers. During Christmas, the businesswoman and her husband personally delivered Christmas fruit packages throughout the Czech Republic. “It’s challenging. We’ve moved to paradise, but we have more work than ever. A popular Spanish term for farmers in La Palma is ‘mañana’ (tomorrow, sometime, maybe it will, maybe not, editor’s note) does not apply. Either you do it now, or you don’t have a harvest and thus the finances to live on,” explains Elisabeth.
Currently, Ostrov chutí is run only by her husband, who also takes care of his original company. Her day is thus divided between working at the computer, visiting farmers and working in the garden. “It’s refreshing. Plus, there’s no signal in the garden, so I just focus on the activity I’m doing at the moment,” she says while grafting cacti from which she’ll harvest dragon fruit in a few months.
“In an hour I manage to graft six to eight of them. In two months we have to make 500,” he describes. Grafting, simply put, involves cutting a piece of cactus that produces pink dragon fruit and attaching it to a cactus that originally produced white fruit. The reason is greater buying interest in pink pitaya.
They were collecting ashes from the terrace
From April to November, she and her husband pollinate the dragon fruit by hand. “The flowers open at night, so we are often in the garden with headlamps for several hours every evening. But with a full moon, we don’t even need flashlights,” explains Elisabeth, who wears a pendant in the shape of the island of La Palma around her neck. She says she would like to consider herself a local, but her Spanish isn’t good enough yet. “Daughters have it easier, they pick up Spanish without any problems at school,” he comments.
Then in the evening, when she sits with her husband on the terrace of their house, they remember what it was like when the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted on the island two years ago. “Until then, we didn’t really realize that we were living on a volcanic island. Suddenly, at a distance of several kilometers around our house, lava flowed from both sides, and every day we swept the ash from the terrace here,” they describe.
Elisabeth and her daughters went to the Czech Republic for a month, but she missed La Palma. “The experts said that there was no danger of another eruption, so we returned. And this despite the fact that the volcano was still active for several weeks and was making incredible noise,” they recall.
Together they discuss and taste a new type of fruit – canistel and tamarillo – which they want to start growing and add to their portfolio. “This is the most fun part of the job, researching new fruit, finding out how it is grown and when is the right time to ship it,” enthuses Elisabeth, explaining why they have different chairs on the patio and in the garden. “So that we can look at the ocean. I haven’t had enough of the view yet. But 15 minutes is enough for me, then I have to go do something else,” she says.
Video: The Cumbre Vieja volcano rumbles on the Canary island of La Palma (September 20, 2021)
On the Canary island of La Palma, the Cumbre Vieja volcano is rumbling. | Video: Reuters