Turning Coconuts into Cash

Being a farm girl, I firmly believe in using the resources you have around you. I recently planted a vegetable and herb garden. (And my tomato seeds sprouted in just six days!) We will use the produce to feed the people we host here. I try really hard to collect the fruit produced by the trees on our yard. For example, mango season just finished, so I have a freezer full of mango jam, and Karl made a delicious mango chutney. 

We also have lots of coconut trees. (I do believe we have 17, to be exact.) Coconut trees actually inspired the name of this blog (Falling Coconuts). When we first moved here, we picked the occasional green one do sip on, or a dry one to make shredded, dried coconut, but most of them were just being wasted. Then our gardener, Daniel, told us that people actually buy them! Better yet, they come around every month or two and pick them themselves! Sign me up! Now those coconuts aren't going to waste PLUS it's about the closest thing to free money that I can think of. Yesterday I earned R$20 during my lunch break - sitting in my hammock, playing games on my iPad - while two guys went around and picked coconuts that we would have eventually had to remove ourselves, plus they did a decent job of doing some pruning while they were up there! 

How many coconuts did they pick? Yesterday it was 70, but this is the slowest time of year for coconuts. A month or two ago they picked around 140! That comes out to about R$0.30, or $0.15 Canadian per coconut. Not a bad deal for having done absolutely nothing!

If you are interested, here is a video clip of how they pick the coconuts. It's a job for two people, one long stick with a hook, and a gunny sack. Enjoy!

(Thanks to Karl for being kind enough to get out of his hammock and get this video for me!)

A colourful afternoon

I kinda wish more of my projects could have such colourful, aesthetically pleasing results! Now I just need to pick plants to put in them!

Rhythm of Life

These days, every time I think about Christmas approaching, I feel 'off kilter', or maybe a little confused. This morning it finally occurred to me why I feel this way. In my mind, it makes the most sense if I put it into musical terms: The underlying pulse, the rhythm of my life is changing. I would like to be able to say it has changed, but I don't think I would be feeling so 'off beat' if that were the case.

Here's what I mean.

In Canada, my life beat to the drum of the seasons. Winter, spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, fall. I come from a farming family, so maybe this rings truer to me than to most, but I know that when snow melts and spring starts to show her face, that the time of planting, has come, because deep within me, I know that all too soon, the snow will be on us again. I know that summer is the time to enjoy fresh food, to savour long evenings, to go to the beach, camp, or sit in the backyard with people you love. Fall is the time to harvest and store up, because we know what lies ahead. It's a time of canning, preserving, returning to routine. Winter is a time of rest. The short days and long nights tell us to slow down. Even the soil rests, and we hope that we produced enough to take us through. (ok, today we can go to the grocery store and get everything we need!)

This is the rhythm I have known my entire life.

In Brazil, especially where we live, there is no rhythm of seasons, because there are no seasons. So the rhythm of life is different. Here the rhythm beats to the day. People live each day unto itself because they know that tomorrow will most likely be the same as yesterday was. There is always fresh food. There is always warmth. Preserving is not necessary. Storing up is not necessary.

I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile this rhythm around me and the rhythm within me.

 I know that Christmas is just around the corner. The calendar tells me so. But I feel lost, not having gone through the motions of fall. Where is the snow? Where are the short days? My metronome, the signs I look for in nature are not here.

I can't help but wonder how these two rhythms are going to play together. Will I always feel the two distinct beats? Will they always be at odds, or can I learn to dance to them both, together? My hope is that they will eventually create a new and beautiful song.

But only time will tell.