Saturday, January 5, 2013

Eating the Yard

This tree puts out the biggest bunches
I've ever seen! 70lbs for the last bunch!
When the Air Force moved my family and I to a small base in Germany, I jokingly said to my wife that it would be really nice to have a cherry tree in the yard since I had one as a kid and always loved eating them by the handfull. Our realtor showed us some terrifying houses--one of which had hundreds of stuffed birds mounted on the walls (HUNDREDS!!!). But then she showed us one in the small, small town of Niederscheidweiler. The icing on the cake for us was the irony of the cherry tree in the yard.
So when the Air Force moved us to the beautiful island of Guam, we were shown many houses that were okay, but just not for us. Funny enough, one even had a dead bird in it (just one though, not hundreds). But finally, our realtor showed us an awesome house. There wasn't a cherry tree in the yard, but there were 3 banana trees, a papaya tree and a calamansi tree that hangs over the fence for sharing.
Our banana trees are currently producing about 150lbs of bananas each. Our papaya tree is producing the largest papayas I've ever seen and our newly found calamansi tree is giving us tons of of fruit that we know nothing about but are very excited to experiment with.
Calamansis hanging over the fence.
One problem--with my wife and 2/3 of our kids in Hawaii, it's just me and my oldest son, Jacob. We simply cannot eat 450lbs of bananas, we both hate the taste of papayas and there are so many calamanis that are completely new to us and we have no idea what to do with them.
Now at this point you might be wondering why I am complaining about the near orchard-like properties our yard offers. Well, I highlight these issues to showcase the attitude surplus that my son and I are about to attempt. It would be nice to be able to utilize all of this food, but I'm pretty sure banana-induced potassium poisoning isn't very pleasant. But we simply can't consume it all, so as soon as all these things are ripe and ready to come off the tree, we are going to start sharing within the community. 
When we were in Germany, I remember stopping at a bakery in Lutzerath on the way home from work and seeing a transaction between the butcher who worked across the street and the owner of the bakery. The butcher handed the baker a package of meats and the baker handed the baker an weeks worth of baked goods. It was a community exchange where no money was needed. It was amazing to me to see how even the owner of the town's hotel provided rooms for visiting family in exchange for breads and meats for the hotel restaurant. It was a completely self-reliant community. A self-licking ice cream cone, if you will. That moment will always stick with me. But how can we replicate this in our small community? That's the million-dollar question. Well, I'll keep you all updated as we try to figure out what to do with all of this fruit we have been blessed with this season.
Banana flowers peeking out.
They're great in salads.
Papayas as big as your head!








More bananas than we
know what to do with.
Coconuts!!!
Zorak stares at me every time I
photograph his fruit.

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