From Orange Groves to Teak Orchards…
another example of
A World of Flowers, Plants, and a Whole lot more.

It all started with a search for a better orange. Fifteen years ago, while vacationing in Belize, John and Marijke Postema, the owners of Flower World, purchased several hundred acres of land and decided to plant Citrus trees. Their hope was to export better tasting oranges to their customers at The Produce Market in Maltby.

Shortly after planting the citrus trees, an outbreak of citrus greening disease hit Belize and decimated all 200 acres of their citrus orchards. Not to be discouraged, they tried again. This time with citrus varieties that were supposed to be more disease resistant. To help control the insects responsible for the spread of greening disease, they planted teak trees among the citrus trees. While this second crop of citrus also failed, the teak trees flourished.

Fast forward 15 years when it became time to thin some of the teak orchards. This allowed the rest of the trees to grow tall, straight, and thick. The young teak is classified as Plantation Grown Teak and is the perfect substitution to the harmful harvesting of old-growth teak in protected areas.

Now, what do we do with the harvested teak timber?

Our Belizean artisans stay busy on the farm creating beautiful teak garden furniture for our Flower World customers in the Pacific Northwest. Since we are crafting the teak furniture ourselves, we can also design and build custom orders of teak furniture.

Are you wondering what happened to the empty citrus fields? Currently we have a large herd of sheep and cattle happily grazing the fields. And hopefully, the jaguars will stay on their own reserve, which is only about 10 miles west of the farm.

We did not stop with teak trees!

Today, FreshWater Creek Farm, on its 1,000 acres, has grown to include the Maya Heights Village Resort and Restaurant. We use our farm grown vegetables, farm raised meat, and tilapia to take “Farm-To-Table” to a whole new level!