Edrin and The Apple Hole
by Perry Joseph
I had met Edrin a year prior while shooting photos of Rock Sound Bay just south of Rock Sound airport (RSD). Edrin was cracking conch by the water at the time and obliged me in a conversation that centered on our shared passion for the island of Eleuthera. The message I got was simple; Edrin sincerely and humbly loves his island -- heart and soul.
After hearing about Edrin's passion for the land, farming and agriculture, coupled with what he does at his Apple Hole Mart in Rock Sound, I promised to visit again to get the 411 from him and share it with you. I'm glad I did too. If you have a chance to visit the Apple Hole Mart one Saturday, by all means, do it. If Edrin is there when you visit, ask him about his favorite goat.
It's people like Edrin and his Family (and that delicious home made Johnnycake) that keep us coming back to Eleuthera for more. 
You can reach the Apple Hole Farm Meat Mart and Deli or Edrin at 242-334-2612, cell 242-467-9454 or email: .
Q&A With Mr. Symonette
Q - Edrin, what year were you born?
A - 1963, in Rock Sound, Eleuthera.
Q - Where did you go to school?
A - I went to school at Rock Sound Primary School, and then went on to Preston Albury for a year. Then moved to Nassau and went to Government High. From Government High I got a scholarship, went off to school in Hampton, Virginia. I came back and worked in Nassau. I didn't really like it too much, so moved back to Rock Sound. Then fell in love with some goats, and started to work on a construction company with my father because my father was trying to build a construction company at the time. All along I managed the goats in the morning, and let them feed during the day and locked them up at night. But the goat business actually grew and started the farming business for me. So it moved and grew to where I had to basically farm full time, and that's where it started.
Q - How long ago did you start your farm?
A - About 27 years now I have been in the farming business.
It Started With Goats
Q - It started with goats then?
A - It started with goats. I fell in love with goats. It became a hobby for me and that was it. It took off from there.
Q - What other things are you doing on the farm right now besides goats?
A - The goats got me into it and then I realized developing goat herds, and from the goat we got the mutton. That was really a lucrative business for me, but what I realized was I had to build the numbers of my herds because there were times when I was unable to slaughter. So I went into the citrus business where I grew Persian limes. I started with a few Persian limes and taught myself and learned from the older farmers some of the propagation techniques of how to propagate plants, the air layering techniques, and then with the oranges and grapefruits and tangerines I went into the propagation of those with the budding, and with the mangoes with the grafting. With oranges and grapefruits what we did was we produced quite a bit of what we call root stock. We used the sour orange root stock and then grafted or budded the different varieties of citrus onto the sour orange root stock.
Q - What other kinds of things do you do? I notice over at your farm you have other animals besides goats. You have chickens, tell us some more about that.
A - We also have the marketing side of what we do here -- the Apple Hole Farm Meat Mart and Deli in Rock Sound. But the thing about it is we grow a few pigs, but the pigs are really for our Saturdays at the deli where we have a program where we produce our jerk, so we use the pigs for jerk pork. With the chickens I'm starting a program where we are producing local eggs because there is a market for locally produced eggs. So that's more or less why we are growing the chickens.
Meat Mart Deli Restaurant
Q - You and I met when you were cracking conch and also you serve fish and chicken. Tell us more about what you serve over at the deli.
A - The deli, like I said, has over the years been more or less a marketing tool. Whatever we have been able to produce at the farm, on Saturdays we try to move it through there. Now how we do it is, with the goats we produce the mutton. So from that side of it we produce the mutton souses on Saturday. With the pork we produce the jerk pork or we make a combination of the pork and mutton souses. We do a sheep tongue souse. With the chicken we also do a chicken souse or we do a jerk chicken to go along with the jerk pork. The conches that you saw me beating we actually to a stew conch on Saturday morning that goes over really well. At the deli we produce a mutton souse, or we produce a combination which would be the mutton and pork souse. We do a stew fish, stew conch, sheep tongue, and the chicken souse, along with the Johnnycake. Right now we are producing a lot of what we call the guinea corn, which is the corn from the sorghum that we feed to the goats so we use the corn to make grits out of that, so we are now producing the guinea corn grits that go along with jerk pork or jerk chicken.
Q - My experience at your deli is that you have the local people coming in quite often. I don't see too many of the tourists come in, but is that because you're just open on Saturdays?
A - It could be some of that, but we do have tourists that come in. But what we have found over the years is that most of the tourists that come would prefer the uncooked meats, and of late we have not had a lot of the uncooked meat for sale because we have been running a lot of that through our deli. The reason for that is that the potential mutton business in Eleuthera is unbelievable. The market is there for the meat. What I have been trying to do and the reason why we don't really have that fresh mutton market now is that we need to more or less increase our numbers and that's basically what we are trying to do. The tourists that do come we find that the don't prefer the cooked foods, but they want either the local muttons or local pork where they can take it back and cook it for themselves. But we are going to tap into that market as we increase our numbers where we have more of the local fresh meats to sell.
Q - What I enjoyed at the Apple Hole was trying things I never tried before, and found them to be quite excellent. And also those items were quite healthy to eat. I find the mutton and some of your other foods there would be a much better food product than say some of the red meats, etc. Can you speak to that a bit?
A - What I have found over the years is that we find a lot of locals and others who come in to buy, prefer the mutton because you will find that mutton is a leaner meat. The sheep meat sells, but not as well as the mutton because I am finding now there is a market for people looking for more or less organic, or meats that are not as fat or even in healthy foods, such as the guinea corn grits. If you Google it and look for the nutrition potential for that and what you can gain from eating guinea corn it helps with the building of cells in the blood, helps with a lot of different ailments. So it's really good and it's naturally grown. No fertilizer, no chemicals. We allow it to basically grow on its own and we just harvest it and make grits out of it.
Q - Well, it's safe to say that if nobody has tried this type of food, that you're the perfect place the try it because it's a process that you have obviously honed over the years. So I would hope that more people would come to visit your place. Tell us about your place, where it's located and your hours of operation.
A - We are located in Rock Sound, Eleuthera. It's on what we call Fish Street. You turn off Queen's Highway onto Fish Street, and it's the second building on the right. It's called Apple Hole Farm Meat Mart and Deli. Right now we are just open on Saturday, which is fine for us. Maybe later on we will open up a couple other days, but Saturday we are open from 7:00am to 3:00pm on Saturday.
Q - And you have take away there as well as you can sit down and dine?
A - That's correct.
Q - I notice you also have some drinks there as well. You have your lemon drink?
A - We produce a lot of citrus, so the deli is really the marketing tool for us. So what we do is sell limes and also what I call limeade. It's called lemonade in other places, but here over the years, growing up as a boy, we always called it limeade. So we produce the limeade from the limes we produce on the farm. We mainly market our limeade through our deli. None of the other drinks, mainly what we produce and limeade.
Q - I always ask this when I interview people from Eleuthera… who are your favorite musicians in the Bahamas and here?
A - K.B. from Freeport and Dr. Seabreeze. I like his music, that old folk music. I'm old school and I like that old music.
Eleuthera Means Freedom
Q - What is your favorite thing about Eleuthera?
A - Freedom, independence. I think Eleuthera can give a lot more of our people independence if we were to take advantage of a lot of the opportunities that I see are here.
Q - You are very passionate about your work and you have a great love for what you are dong with agriculture. I assume this is something you are going to do for the rest of your life then?
A - I'm in it for the long haul. There's no turning back now. I think if I was going to turn back it would have been before now. This is a lifetime development for me as a person, and really a development for agriculture in this country. Especially Eleuthera. There's so much potential on this island for the development of agriculture. I don't think we've really touched the surface. If you look at the history of agriculture here, we produce food for the whole Bahamas, we used to do it before and I think we can do it again. I think we can do it in some different ways and some different products in agriculture.
Q - If somebody wants to contact you about your farming or your deli, how would they get in touch with you?
A - I have an email address which is .
Q - Do you have a phone number for Apple Hole Meat Mart and Deli?
A - 242-334-2612 or cell 242-467-9454
Q - We really appreciate you spending time with us today, Edrin.
A - I appreciate you being here.
Special thanks to Edrin, his Family and the fine folks at the Apple Hole for showing us, once again, it is its people that make the island of Eleuthera so warm and wonderful.