That is how Mr. Fairweather said he quietly planted 85,000 mahogany trees in 14 years, with his own money, on his own land. Mr. Fairweather is the George Washington Carver and Johnny Appleseed of Belize. He talks to his trees and helps to spread their seeds where other dare not tread. He has been successful at growing mahogany along a river in soil experts would call marginal.
Mahogany usually grows inland.
In early February Mr. Fairweather hosted government and NGO officials from Belize and Mexico on his 386-acre plantation. The unveiling was to showcase what he has done in fourteen years against the odds. He conducted a how-to workshop for a rural grassroots outreach organization and used the occasion to pitch for funding from government and international agencies, because he has exhausted his own, he explained. Officially, British pirates began shipping logwood to the U.K. in 1660, but some estimate that logging began here sometime between 1628 and 1630. Slavery ended in 1807 but mahogany cutting was never a lucrative position for workers.