Cunucu di Jimmy: If You Grow It, They Will Come
As James Ramos strolls through the clover-like leaves of peanut plants, following the meticulous rows of prickly dragon fruit cacti on his farm, every so often he plucks a single fruit. “I'm going to show you an American hybrid,” Ramos says as he picks a dragon fruit. “This one tastes like mango.”
— By Kylee Ross
— Photography Kenneth Theysen
James Ramos
Owner – Cunucu di Jimmy
Anticipation fills the air each time he slices down the middle of a dragon fruit, revealing what vibrant color the speckled flesh will boast next. This variety of dragon fruit has bright green skin and deep magenta flesh that glistens in the sun—the black seeds are barely visible against the rich color. “If you want to try it, squeeze it like this,” Ramos demonstrates as he cups the fruit in one hand and squeezes as if the fruit is blocking him from making a full fist. The dragon fruit flesh pops up and out of the skin, and Ramos takes one big bite.
He has an obvious tell when he’s happy with the flavor of his dragon fruit. He goes in for a second bite of the mango-flavored fruit, so this one passes his test. “I’ve got more than 45 flavors, and each one of them has a kind of wow factor,” Ramos says. But when we repeat this ritual with the dragon fruit variety that tastes like coconut, Ramos immediately chucks the fruit, letting it roll to the ground. Not ripe enough.
Ramos and his wife, Maria Elena Ramos, run a one-hectare farm filled with dragon fruit cacti, fig trees and peanuts. “I didn't finish college, so I started looking for a job somewhere else,” Ramos says. First, he settled on working as a truck driver. “And suddenly I realized that my passion was planting and growing because I had been doing it since I was little with my grandfather on his land.” Ramos told Maria this is how he would rather make a living and made a case for why it was the right time to do it. “In the 80s, there was a big boom of new hotels,” Ramos says. “Many people left their land behind to start working in the tourism sector.” Ramos remembers venting to his wife about the disbelief he felt. “Our local food—okra, small cucumbers, beans and green peanuts—were getting left behind, and we were losing our food identity,” Ramos says. At the time, this local produce was only available through import from the neighboring island of Curaçao. “So I said, ‘That cannot be,’” Ramos recalls.
On a small plot of land, they began growing jambo (okra) and comcomber chikito (small cucumbers). Within three years, they hired two employees and bought two more plots of land to rotate the crops. Finally, they bought a final piece of land in Tanki Flip next to the water reserve where they grow the dragon fruit now.
A wave of timeshare owners in Tanki Flip encouraged Ramos to grow produce from the East Coast of the United States. So, they started growing eggplant, cucuzza, figs—anything people requested that was able to grow in Aruba. “We used a little house in front of our house as a drive-through. As of 9:30 a.m., you could see tourists coming around to get fresh produce and then they would go home to cook,” Ramos says.
“I started growing dragon fruit about 14 years ago,” he confirms. “While I was growing figs, I had to slow down production because we had issues with Mediterranean fruit flies.” People in Aruba started growing more fruit, and this introduced a pest the island had never encountered before. “CNN had a report of Israel having dragon fruit farms, and I told my wife, ‘I would really love to have that plant,’” Ramos remembers. One day, while “cruising around,” Ramos says, he stumbled upon a man who had brought a dragon fruit plant to Aruba from Hong Kong. When Ramos asked if he could buy a cutting of the plant, the man insisted that he would be doing him a favor since he had to prune the plant anyway. “He brought the red variety and the white variety to Aruba,” Ramos remembers. “And with the boom of the internet, I found more people who grew dragon fruit of different flavors.”
The texture of dragon fruit is similar to that of a kiwi, with the same type of edible seeds that pop in your mouth with every bite. The taste can be described as sweet and tangy, similar to the taste combination of a pear and a kiwi with a hint of citrus. But at Cunucu di Jimmy, a dragon fruit can taste like mango, pear or coconut.
“Now, I make my own organic hybrids to keep searching for the wow factor,” Ramos says. “Without any marketing, people come here to buy dragon fruit.” Ramos and Maria sell their specialty varieties of dragon fruit out of their restaurant, Mi Boca Dushi Snacks, and during harvesting season at Super Food—the most popular supermarket on the island.
Ramos has a lot to be proud of—most notably helping to shape a new wave of agriculture in Aruba. However, Ramos says he's most proud of Maria. “Sometimes you just want to throw in the towel and sometimes it’s really tiring,” Ramos says. “She's the person who really pushes me to keep on going.”
Cunucu di Jimmy
Tanki Flip 65Tanki Flip
(297) 733-0007
