Wednesday, 20 August 2008

Coconut Harvest

coconut harvest from Siargao Island, NE Mindanao, Philippines, home of Cloud 9 surfing spotThis is the usual three-monthly coconut harvest from the sixteen trees in my garden. The usual haul is 5 sacks, each of about 25 kilos kopras meat (about 100 pieces per sack).

It's a wonderful, bountiful tree - see: Coco Loco

climbing coconut tree in Siargao Island, NE Mindanao, Philippines, home of Cloud 9 surfing spotIt does everything you can think of, except, possibly, marriage guidance, but it's almost certainly got a secret chemical that will help with that kind of problem.

One brave fellow climbs the trees and trims off the ripe coconuts, and they come crashing down like small bombs.Lugit man shelling coconuts  Siargao Island, NE Mindanao, Philippines
Then they chop the whole nuts in half, and scoop out the meat with a specially-shaped knife, a lugit.
tapahan copra drying house from Siargao Island, NE Mindanao, Philippines, home of Cloud 9 surfing spot


The meat is now kopras, but it has to be dried first, in a tapahan, which is really a bodged-up smokehouse, like this. The smouldering coconut husks are used for fuel, and the process takes most of a day.

I've often wondered why the operators of the tapahan don't also use the process to cold smoke a few fish or sides of pork, but perhaps they've never thought of it

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