COPRA, One More Time

We have been processing coconut for their meat for income while in the Philippines. See previous blog; Coconut.

In October last year, we processed about 1000 coconuts to take to the market. The price when we processed was about 48 pesos a kilo. After drying the copra (coconut meat) we should end up with about 300 kilos (about 660 pounds). However, while we were drying the copra, which takes about 2 weeks, the price tanked to about 40 pesos. At 40 pesos we will loose money and decided to hold it until the price went back up. At that price we had also stopped buying coconuts. The price, however, never went back up.

By the beginning of March, the price was at 30 pesos it even went down to 29 pesos one day but went back to 30 pesos. With our pending return to the States, we decided to harvest what coconuts were in our trees to add to the copra we had already processed. We will take a loss but we will get rid of the product.

We had a neighbor climb the trees to harvest the coconuts. While in the trees we had him clean out the crocks and remove old limbs. This helps in the production of more coconuts.

Mike thinks he could climb the trees, but he would be wearing long sleeve shirt, long pants, a safety harness and spikes for his boots, add to that a pair of gloves plus safety glasses. Now the coconut climber here shows up on your door barefoot with a machete and with a bandana on their heads and off they climb away.

After climbing the trees he agreed to husk the coconuts as well. Mike can do it, but it takes him a lot longer to husk than a young man. Mike thinks husking is a young man's job. The rainy season had its toll on all of the coconut productions nationwide.  We only harvested and husked 240 coconuts.

We pay 10 pesos (about 15 cents) per tree climbed and 30 pesos (about 60 cents) per hundred coconuts husked.

Mike then split the coconuts and load them in the cooker. He does not know why, but he likes to do it.

After splitting, the coconuts need to be cooked within 4 hours to minimize mold development. We got the load cooked and shut down for the evening. We were going to cook the next day, but it started non-stop raining for the next couple of days.  Once the rain stopped we were again able to cook for another 5 hours.

Before building our cooker, we had looked at various others in the area. Most are platforms or shacks built over a pit in the ground. The pit in the ground is for the fire. Since, our water table during rainy season is about 1 inch down, we built an above ground cooker with an offset fire pit.  We fully enclosed our cooker keeping the heat inside. Someone asked how much fuel we used (the coconut husk) and it is about ½ of what they use. They were using an open platform over a pit.

After cooking, the meat is removed from the shells. Mike was afraid there was going to be a lot of mold because of the rain, but was surprised with finding very minimal mold. Mike went ahead and shuck (removed the meat) from the coconuts.

When we get a good sunny day we will dry the meat in the sun and cut it in smaller pieces. The smaller pieces are so we use fewer bags to haul the meat to market. We get docked 3 pesos per bag used (about 5 cents, I know, not much for Americans, but for Filipinos that is a lot).

We will also have to re-work the meat we processed mid-January. It has become buggy and dirty. After getting the new batch dried and the old batch cleaned we will mix the two batches and take it to market. We may not lose as much money as we had thought, the price has been slowly climbing out of the gutter since we started processing the new batch.

Thank you for following.