Coconuts

Coconuts

When we arrived in the Philippines we needed cash flow. Flor said a lot of people buy and sell Copra (coconut meat). With the coconuts on our own land, Flor started buying coconuts and copra.

The process starts with hiring someone to climb the tree and cut out the ripe coconuts. The pay for this is 8 pesos per tree (about 20 cents).  This is a young man's job.

The coconuts are in a thick husk that has to be removed. I have tried doing this, but it is the hardest part of the process (not counting climbing the tree) and we hire it out at 30 pesos per 100 coconut (about 70 cents).

This leaves a pile of husks and, in our case, since we have been sun drying the coconut meat, we have been burning these husks.  Actually, the husks can be converted into a lot of things, like coco coir, coco fiber, coco mat, etc..

Then the coconuts are split open. Some coconut are starting to sprout and there is a “blossom” in some of the coconuts called botbot  (pronounced boatboat). They are semi sweet and eaten on the spot. The neighborhood kids come around because they want the botbot. The halves are either put in the sun to cook, or cooked over a slow fire. They are cooked to loosen the meat from the shell so the meat can be shucked out. Also, if they are not immediately cooked mold will develop on the meat. We have just finished building a coconut cooker and have our next batch of coconuts stacked next to it for processing. Everybody that we have talked to said the mold is not a problem, but looking at moldy copra you can see how it would effect the weight. Copra is bought and sold by weight.

Sometimes the coco water gets splashed into your arms and legs when you split them.  I found out that coconut water makes your skin very soft and supple that's why I like to help split the husked coconuts :). 

The neighbor kids wanting to have some of the botbot.  It is a nice and refreshing snack.

 Then you load the halved coconuts on top of the cooker.  You slowly smoke them for 24 hours using the husks.

Our newly built cooker with coconuts ready to be processed.  This pile is between 5 to 6 hundred coconuts.

The neighborhood dogs also love to chew on the coconut meat.  Here's our dog Yawny who helped himself with a half of the split coconut.

After it is cooked the copra is shucked out of the shell. A heavy spoon-like tool is used. Either hand held or attached to a seat. I can shuck 2 – 3 coconuts a minute using the seat. I have used a Buck knife to shuck, but the spoon tool is easier.  This can be hired out, but we do it ourselves. If it is hired out, the pay for this is the shells themselves. They will make charcoal out of the shells and sell it.

After shucking there will be a pile of shells left over. We bag them and then will make them into charcoal later. There is a street vendor in town who buys our charcoal.

At this time we store the copra on our front porch. We plan on building a shed to store it in. The copra does require more drying at this time. The best way to finish drying it is in the sun for a day or two. Our subjective moisture check is how crispy it is when broken.

Once shucked the copra can be sold at market. We bag it, load it in the Revo and haul it to San Juan, about 45 minutes south of us.  There are a couple of markets in San Juan. The first one we we went to, San Miquel Oil, appeared to be more subjective on the moisture content. We then started going to Talcoban Oil and they are more objective on the moisture content. It takes a considerable more time to be processed at Talcoban Oil, but it is worth it for the objective moisture content.  People bring the copra by car, jeepney, truck, trike and motorcycles.  It is dropped off and workers carry it into the warehouse to be weighted.  Then they dump the bags and pile it high in the warehouse.

They come in trucks.....

.....passenger jeepneys....

...tricycles.

 Most people who buy and sell copra do not worry about moisture content and so the first time we took it to market we did not worry about the moisture content. That first time we were docked 14% weight for moisture content. After talking to the market owner and some research, we now dry the copra. When first cooked and shucked, the moisture content is somewhere around 40%. We now dry the copra down to about 5%.

The moisture content led to another problem. Coconut is bought in two forms, Lubi, where it is still in the husk and shell. And Lugi, where the copra has been shucked from the shell and cooked. Currently the buy price is about 30 pesos (about 75 cents) a kilo. The sell price is about 40 pesos (about $1). Since moisture content is not a concern we were buying the lugi at about 40% moisture and were either being docked, or us drying the copra and losing weight, we were not making much money. We have talked about docking the people we buy from, but we do not have an objective way to determine moisture content. So, we are now mostly buying Lubi. Lubi is more work but we make a little more money. We buy the Lubi at 8 pesos (about 20 cents) each. It takes about 4 lubi to make a kilo of copra. We process about 600 lubi at a time. People like selling to us because they do not have to pay anyone to haul it to another buyer.

All the copra brought to market in this area is loaded on ships and hauled to processing facilities in Tacloban. It is processed into coconut oil and sold worldwide. It is said that 90% of the world's coconut production is from the Philippines. Driving around the country there is not much land that does not have coconut tress on it. Even the resorts we stayed at lately had coconut trees on it.

Thank you for following.  Now it's back to work on the next batch of copra, tehehe.  We love y'all.