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The harvester is thickly turbaned to protect his head from the sharp palm leaves. As he moves toward the first tree, which grows sixty feet high at about an 80% angle with the ground, he slips an ancient machete into his belt. He is barefoot, so that he can feel his grip against the notches in the trunk that were cut when the tree matured and started to bear fruit. It takes him twenty seconds to climb to the the nuts and disappear into the leaves.

The machete is pulled from its makeshift scabbard, and first the dead fronds are cut away from the tree. They float to the ground, and the harvester’s legs and torso appear. He then cuts away the three ripe bundles, each of which holds about six coconuts. The bundles dive to the ground, which shakes when the nuts hit, and break away from the branch, bouncing high into the air. By the time the last coconuts settle to the ground, the harvester has almost finished the climb down. The entire process has taken a minute and a half.

He collects the eighteen coconuts into a pile, drives an iron pike into the ground, and leans into the pike with each coconut to remove the husk. That task completed, he picks one up and gives it three hard whacks with the machete. It cracks, and he carefully pulls it apart, giving me half. He drinks the cool, sweet water inside, and I do the same. I look up at the tree and back at him with a nod, letting him know I’m impressed. He gives me a half smile and walks wordlessly away to the next tree. He’ll finish this grove before the end of the day, leaving the dead fronds and dried husks for the locals to pick up and use for cooking fuel. In three months he’ll be back to harvest this grove again.

This entry was posted on July 29, 2012 at 3:42 am and is filed under Food, Travel with tags coconut harvesting, coconut husk, medina mindanao. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.