The way that coconut palms work, like most trees, is that the fruit grows large, and then falls off the tree. Dave told me that one of his grade school teachers in New Guinea was killed by a dropping coconut. So, it's nothing to sneeze at.
When we first moved into this house, a group of Islander people came by and asked to harvest the coconuts. They brought long-handled hooks with them that they used to drag the coconuts down.
So, for the last 6 months we've been watching the coconuts grow, and wondering if the people would come back to take the latest batch.
Yesterday, a gentleman came by and said "Can I have coconut?"
Yep, sure. He was by himself, so we wondered how he'd go about it. He went to the back of his car, and took out a bunch of rope, and a couple of specially curved pieces of wood. The wood pieces he nailed to the tree. Then he used the wood as a platform to scale tree, looping the rope around the tree, just like a timber faller, going to top a tree.
When he got within a reasonable distance of the coconuts, he twisted them off, just like picking plums.
We thought he might take them all, but no, just the ones that were ripe.
If you look at the picture you can see a bit in the middle with no coconuts.
So, here's another skill I have not gained yet, how to tell when coconuts are "ripe". Hope that's not on the citizenship exam that I still have to take soon.
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