I’ve been at Raintree for a few weeks now. The start of the new harvest season in April is always chaotic. I’ve taken to waking up earlier than anyone else lately. Not because I have something to do. I seem to run out of sleep consistently by 5am and I hate staring at the ceiling waiting for light to come. So most mornings, I take in the sunrise walking amongst the trees and the plantation. This morning I brought the camera to capture the fog as it rose off the plantain. Some mornings, the fog sits heavy all the way until 9am. It’s magical.
I set up the camera and waited by the entrance as the employees started to walk in; one by one, and then in pairs, and later in groups of three or five.
“Good morning, sir!”
Not so long ago, this entrance was a dense push. We’ve shaped it into a small enterprise, replete with all the growing pains of one. But as it’s been famously said, “nothing of value has ever been built in anyone’s comfort zone.”
I like what we’re building. All 96 of us. We arrive here every morning, wrestle with the days activities and leave with the warmth of the setting sun on our backs. Another brick in the long process of building, well-laid.
I can’t wait to see what becomes of us.
I’ll be posting more about Raintree in the coming weeks. There’s been a ton of activity and I just haven’t had a lot of time to write. There’s a lot to share about this journey that I think could be helpful to other entrepreneurs out there. I find photography inspires me to focus my writing. I hope it will help me tell those stories a little better and a little more often.
