the farm

Welcome to our unique Caribbean camp. We live here in the midst of a lush tropical setting, an eco-camp surrounded by a rich environment and amazing history.

Bruce and Mathilde in the gardens at Mount Victory Camp.

Our job is to make the natural and cultural wonders of our island life accessible to our guests. Comfortable living close to nature is our mantra. Low-impact, sustainable living is our goal. Here you’ll live in the trees on a platform habitat made from those same trees, hike along breezy ridges, mountain bike ocean trails, horseback through cattle country….or just look up from your hammock at the fruit ripening over your head!

We’ll help you to experience the multicultural mixture of food and music, the people and environment that make St. Croix one of the most fascinating places in the world!

The camp is built in and around the life of our small Caribbean farm.

Vegetable and herb gardens
Tropical fruit tree orchard
Lumber mill
Alternative energy
Pavilion
Tortoise colony

The farm is surrounded by peaceful green meadows and forests, tropical wildlife, and the incredible history read in the countless stone ruins - it all makes for a supremely relaxing environment. And the opportunities for hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, ruins exploring and more offer the chance for a wonderfully adventurous holiday.

You won’t miss meeting a few locals at our pavilion. Mt Victory Camp and the surrounding area is also where some St. Croix residents come to relax.

Away from the hustle and bustle of our town centers, set amongst its massive trees, even the air tastes better around here!

We’ve always been a natural gathering-place; centuries past this was a settlement for the native Taino and Carib Indians. When Europeans colonized St. Croix the rich farmland in the area was used to grow sugar cane, tobacco and cotton. They left behind many reminders of their busy and violent past: stone bridges still cross the valley streambed, 1700s factories where the cane was boiled down to molasses or distilled to rum are now covered by vines and massive trees. With the collapse of the island’s agricultural economy, the area emptied out and become home to cattle operations, a few small farmers, and moonshiners.

On the camp office porch: a bowl of sorrel blooms (used to make a local island drink) and the skull of a wild hog.

“When I started building my first house in this area there was no power or telephones. Cattle, horses and hundreds of hogs free-ranged everywhere. The roads were dirt, and during storms often impassable. Over the last decade we’ve entered the 20th century. We now have a paved road and power and phones…but it still feels like another world here. Time travels slowly. Horses, cattle, goats, and fruit orchards and vegetable gardens are still all around us… The lush green of our valley is loaded with mango and soursop, genip and cacao trees. Daytimes you can still hear the call of Mangrove Cuckoos a quarter mile away and from deep down the gut (streambed) the mournful cry of the deep forest barbary dove.”

- Bruce Wilson, Camp Owner

VEGETABLE AND HERB GARDENS

Mathilde tends to a mature cassava plant - a traditional island crop. Cassava is a starchy root vegetable.

Camp co-owner Mathilde Aurelien-Wilson writes: “I grow fresh vegetables in our kitchen garden using natural methods. I’m growing traditional Caribbean root crops (tania, cassava, sweet potatoes), leafy greens for salads and stir-fries (collard greens, lettuce, arugula, pok choy, spinach, sweet basil) and other food-crops like cucumber, tomatoes, okra, string beans, pumpkin, carrots, beets, sweet and hot peppers. We use our herbs for cooking and for “bush teas”: basil, anise, tarragon, dill, lemon grass, oregano, thyme, celery and parsley. I’m experimenting with tobacco right now, using seeds from plants that can be found still growing wild from colonial times. Someday we’ll be making our own cigars!”

“My methods are adapted to our Caribbean climate, pests and soils. I use plant association, crop rotations, mulching, terracing and composting. I learned about gardening from my family growing up in coffee country of Southern Haiti. I continued to learn through formal education in agriculture science at the University of Havana (MS Agronomy) and later doing outreach work in sustainable hillside farming and soil conservation programs for CARE in my native Haiti.”

- Mathilde Aurelien-Wilson

FRUIT TREE ORCHARDS

Throughout the camp, we have planted nearly 250 fruit trees. For instance near the two-story bungalow you’ll find coconut, September plum, mesple, mango, hibiscus, carambola. Around the schoohouse bungalow are varieties of banana, golden apple, star apple, guavaberry, calabash, coffee, egg fruit, mango, acerola cherry. Some trees are giving us fruit already and over the next few years, most will bear fruit.

Green papayas in the camp orchard.

LUMBER MILL

It’s not easy to construct buildings in a sustainable way in the tropics. Termites are the reason why all building is done with arsenic treated pine or masonry blocks. I wanted to build the camp, as much as possible, from local, natural, untreated materials: a healthy and aesthetic choice. I’m constantly on the lookout for useful trees as I travel around the island. Only dead or dying trees are harvested, and normally landowners are happy to have me remove them. Storms (and droughts too) are nature’s way of cleaning out the weak and older trees. Principal species used are West Indian Mahogany, Thibet, Rain Tree (Saman), Almond, Black Olive and Teak.

We cut logs into lumber using our bandsaw mill (ours is model LT15 by Woodmizer). We can cut up to 26" wide boards. The mill is a wonderful tool, making possible a kind of construction that otherwise couldn’t be done (or afforded). We also occasionally sell wood from inventory.

As building projects get done we hope to make furniture with these wonderful woods in the future.

We built the beds for the camp in a rustic arts and crafts style using pegged mortise and tenon with knotty teak boards.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Our bathhouse produces hot water from a solar thermal flat plate collector. The system produces lots of hot water, keeping it ready for use in two 80 gallon super-insulated tanks. Low-flow shower heads mean you can relax in a nice long hot shower after your day of exploring the island…or after your day of swinging in your hammock doing absolutely nothing!

Special thanks go to our Virgin Islands Energy Office who dedicated themselves to helping low-impact tourism by funding these systems through a grant from the US Dept of Energy. In the second phase of this project we will almost go off the power grid with a rooftop photo-voltaic array and battery storage system.

Open-roof showers with plenty of solar-heated hot water...aaaahhh.

PAVILION

Here’s the center of activity for the camp. The camp pavilion is a place to relax and meet people - fellow campers, locals...a place to cook, eat, drink and enjoy yourself.

When the pavillion kitchen is open, it means Mount Victory style local food and cold drinks!

There’s a pay phone, camp library, and hangout. The pavilion is constructed of massive timbers of mahogany and raintree. The oven is built from old industrial chimney stones heated by local charcoal. It’ll rotisserie whole pigs (“lechon”) , sides of beef, goat or lamb or even bake bread.

We’ve got campfires with grills for outdoor cooking and grilling. Our fireplace has seen a lot of lobsters, fresh fish, and local grass-fed Senepol beef. Campers make their own food, or when the camp kitchen is open it’s an easy choice! Mathilde’s Haitian Pumpkin Soup is legendary (sometimes with goat stewed in) and her 5 Rum tonic “Jouk li Jou” has Caribbean drums beating!

Pig roasts are a Latino specialty of St. Croix’s proud West End. It’s cooked with camp-grown herbs racaito and achiote, for half a day in our stone oven.

Master roaster Severo Rodriguez shares his Crucian heritage every time he fires up the cassia coal oven. Ernest Toqruck (left) lends a hand.

The pavilion is ideal for group meals, parties, weddings and more!
Click here to read more about group events in the pavilion...

TORTOISE COLONY

These prehistoric animals form the core of a captive breeding program running almost two decades. South American red-footed tortoises (Geocolonius denticultata) are thought by some to have arrived by indigenous canoe from the South American continent long long ago. They share the ruins with guests staying in the schoolhouse bungalow.

These mellow friendly animals are slowmoving but curious. They love to eat hibiscus flowers, fruits, and vegetables.