Farm To Table Dessert: Mangoes

We have mangoes!

As the main crop of our tiny orchard, our mango trees took up the majority of the property space.

The trees are mostly two decades old and they start bearing fruits since ten years ago yet as the trees grow older the more they'll bear fruits.

There used to be two Indian Mango trees around which really is our favorite to munch on when visiting the place but because of the termites they are now gone. The attack was slow and the trees died slowly too.

A lot of trees has been taken down by either termites or storms, what survived now are the oldest ones that are near the streams.

This is the place where my Father planted his first red bananas, which is so unique in color and flavor.

The property was surrounded my streams which the older people called 'tongue-like' because of its shape where the long rectangular land was shaped like a tongue.

We were told of the dangers of being swallowed because of its shape and perhaps it's true and we never really lived there, yet we made a garden there too on the free open spaces of the land where trees were used to be planted.

We called the place 'garden' which is so unusual to hear in our village but easier to say.

There are two fruiting seasons of mangoes in our region and mango farmers would often start spraying flower inducing hormones to the trees, either on Febuary or October which ensures that the flowers would form and the fruit won't be aborted by the tree.

The girl on the picture is my sister, she said she wanted to try stapling the newpaper together.

Being a farm assistant (by choice) wasn't really that easy, we would often staple the mangoes with newspapers together to cover each fruit to prevent insects attacks but in the end of the season we are glad to have a big harvest.

In the last harvest we gathered a total of 200 kilos of ripe mangoes.

We sold it for $1.2-$1.6 per kilo and ate the rest that we refused to sell.

The task is daunting and it required a lot of patience and dedication, from wrapping and stapling the fruits to harvesting and selling.

I have no pay, I'm sorry to rant, but it all went to the payment for the fertilizers, spray hormones, and to the owner yet we just ate our share.

I hope next time we'll double our returns for our investment, like more harvest and lesser insect attacks.

My Father introduced planting fruit trees in our community thirty years ago, it may be part of his profession but we harvested mangoes now and ate variety of fruits that we used to buy from the local stores.

I also wanted to start planting something unique and new now that I am older, something that I can call my own plant and a personal choice of fruit to grow.

Or perhaps I'll tell about them on my next post.

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ABOUT ME

@janesuiren is an introverted night owl who enjoys coffee a lot. An otaku and a foodie, she also lives inside the stories she dreams to publish one day. You can catch her admiring her rainy and picturesque hometown in Western Leyte, Philippines.

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