Remember I mentioned that on the finka, the farm I visited, they grew other produce as well? In the interest of agriculture, I will share with some of you a few fascinating facts from el otro mundo (the other world!)
Scattered amongst the coffee plants are 80 avocado trees, all avocado tropico, a pale green variety of avocados at least twice as large as Haas and with twice the flavor. These, too, undergo two main harvests, yielding an average of 15 each day during these primary cosechas but a few more throughout the year.
Platano - plantain - are also scattered throughout the finca; these yield at varying times, but around every 3 months. . Platano requires an unimaginable amount of labor, justifying, I suppose, the high prices. As the ceudotallo (not sure if that’s spelled correctly!), or stick for each tree grows, it begins to produce bunches of platano (resembling bunches of bananas) that are at first small and straight. These deditos make the racimo. After about 2 weeks, the worker must climb the tree and cut off the matriz (leaf) del racimo as well as the outlying deditos.
This improves the presentación, or appearance and yield of the rest of the bunch. The racimo is then covered with a special plastic bag with holes in it (these bags are blue!) and the bag tied with a string; all bags tied the same day are tied with the same color string.
Approximately 12 weeks later, the leaves of the platano tree will begin to yellow, indicating that the time of harvest has arrived. Green platano are harvested one week earlier than platano maduro. After harvest, that particular stem is cut off and the tree left until another begins to produce. Interestingly, the ceudotallo is very agrio, filled with a watery liquid that actually composes about 50% of the stem: la manecha, or la leche de mato.
The last treat of the finka was mandarin oranges, picked fresh, ripe, naturally orange, soft, sweet, from the trees in the yard. I asked if Gustavo knew why mandarins were rarely exported fresh. He said in Colombia, they pick them when they are 75% ripe to sell in the supermarkets; he thought that upon arrival in Miami, they were probably about 85% ripe and only about 25% of them could be sold before spoiling. Hence, I pity those of you who only know the canned version.
And that my friends, is my insight into the arrival of the wonderful world of produce markets in Colombia.
1 comment:
I enjoyed reading all your latest posts. I love the bit you wrote about plantains. I went for a walk with some friends once in Costa Rica during our DTS outreach, we were looking for the river and found our way there on a dirt road through a plantain plantation. Luis had worked on a farm before, so my simple "how can you tell the difference between a banana tree and a plantain tree?" question led to the rest of the walk being filled with interesting details about what you wrote about and more.
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