By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Rip Winkel has applied his horticulture knowledge all over the world, working on banana plantations in Guatemala and with cacao farmers in Ecuador.
But most recently, he has planted himself in Hays as the horticulture agent for the Cottonwood District, which includes Ellis and Barton counties.
Winkel, 58, moved to Hays to be closer to family in Denver, where he grew up.
Winkel started working in farming and landscaping when he was in junior high. He spent vacations working on a relative’s farm outside of Newton. Though he had a passion for music and art, he decided applying his creativity in horticulture would be more practical.
He received his bachelor’s degree in fruit and vegetable production at Texas A&M with an emphasis in tropical and subtropical fruits and vegetables. He later received an master’s degree in agriculture development from Colorado State University.
After Winkel graduated from Texas A&M, Del Monte hired him to work on banana plantations on the eastern side of Guatemala. That operation later shifted toward cantaloupe production. Winkel was eventually transferred back to the U.S. where he helped manage 6,000 acres of cantaloupe in Arizona and California. During the spring, summer and fall, the cantaloupes came from the U.S., and during the winter, the melons came from Guatemala and Costa Rica.
“At times, it was extremely difficult, but I have great memories of being down there and roaming through the banana plantation or the people — good people,” he said.
The drain of 100-hour weeks working for Del Monte ultimately became too much, so Winkel decided to leave to create his own company, Agriscapes, a landscaping and irrigation company. One of the highlights of this time was a project he did for the Gage Hotel in Marathon, Texas. It was a walk-though park in the Texas desert.
“They call it the Oasis in the Desert out there, because it is very, very dry, desolate country,” he said. “And then you have this blop of green and flowers everywhere and trees. That was a fun project.”
He moved back to Colorado to get his master’s degree and was able to sign up for Peace Corps Master’s International Program. Participants study normal courses stateside, then are sent overseas for a two-year Peace Corps assignment. Upon return, those experiences become the foundation of a thesis or dissertation.
He was assigned to a small village in the coastal region of Ecuador where he worked with locals on cacao, sugar cane and pineapple production. Most people are most familiar with cacao as an ingredient in chocolate.
Winkel was on the cusp of leaving for a job working on a farm in South Africa, when his father fell ill, and he opted to stay in Colorado to help his mother.
But this did not stop Winkel’s wanderlust. During the winter when there wasn’t much to do in ag production and landscaping in Denver, he worked as a volunteer for an organization called Farmers to Farmers based out of Washington, D.C., that teams with Partners of the Americas, which was founded by John Kennedy.
His first assignment was to spend two weeks in Nicaragua working with people there on a blight that hit their main food source, a root called taro. Elephant ear is in the same family. The purple root tastes similar to potatoes.
“They were having a problem because disease was wiping out all production,” he said. “So I went down there and worked with this community on coming up with methods and ways or alternative crops they could be planting not only to eat off of, but also to sell to the local market or the national market up in Managua.”
After finishing his short stint in Nicaragua, Winkel was sent for a longer 10-week mission to eastern Ecuador on the edge of the Amazon basin to a town called Puyo. He worked with local villages on cacao production as well as youth on composting. Two to three times per week, he would get up early, catch the bus and head into the jungle to a community of Kichwa Indians.
He visited one of the group’s 10 cacao farms, talked about soil and natural insecticides and then he would go out with the tribe members and work on pruning the cacao trees.
“We would try to push the jungle pack, because the jungle was always trying to take over, which lessens the yield you get in mazorca. Mazorca is the big pod you get that contains the cacao seeds,” he said.
The seeds are fermented, dried and that is what becomes cocoa.
He visited the Ecuador again last winter and was trying help the group get to a point where it could make its own chocolate to sell to tourists. Tourists visit the area for the natives’ festivals and ritualistic face painting using a clear liquid that stains the skin black.
Winkel decided to take the job in Hays rather than returning to Ecuador this winter. He said it was a more structured job with roots, but was a combination of all the things he was used to doing.
“This job offers me the ability to deal with almost all the issues I have experience with. … I have worked in nurseries and been a production manager. It deals with landscape and landscape design. It deals with fruit and vegetable production, and I have fingers in everything that I have done. I have experience, and I have learned to love in my life — the work,” he said. “The other thing is I am dealing with people. That is also what I like is dealing with people.”
Winkel was already familiar with Hays through trips to Kansas to visit relatives, but his latest impressions have been very welcoming.
“My first impression is that everyone seems to be extremely nice,” he said.
Winkel has a number of projects he would like to work on, including bringing the jujube fruit trees to the area. The tree is tolerant of alkaline soil and drought. It is a small tree that is beautiful for landscaping, and it produces fruit that tastes like apples, which was used to make the original jujube candy.
He wants to promote the concept of edible landscapes. Within the flowering areas, you could plant things, such as jujube, elderberry, black choke berry and Swiss chard.
“You do a landscape with this stuff and at the same time you are harvesting your landscape. It looks beautiful, and you are eating it,” he said. “It is almost like hitting two birds with one stone. You plant it and let it go, because it is already under a watering system.”
Winkel keeps in mind the water shortages here in Hays, and suggests reducing grass to 60 to 40 percent of the yard area and replacing it with other more drought tolerant ground cover like juniper or using drip lines.
“What can we do to beautify something with what we have or within the limits of what we should be doing, which means restricting water, yet your yard will stay beautiful and attractive instead of this wall-to-wall dead buffalo grass,” he said.
He also supports the use of wildflowers along the highway, as it would reduce maintenance and benefit pollinators.
“I am looking at becoming a regular part of this community of serving it, and more than that, being part of it and looking forward to getting to know people,” he said.