This week I tried various new tropical fruits. The two I tried from the farm were Bilimbi Fruit and Guava; they are both grown in the fruit tree forest on the property. Bilimbi is a small, green, oval-shaped fruit with the consistency of a juicy apple. They are native to Southeast Asia and have been claimed by both Malaysia and Indonesia as countries of origin. Although there are both sweet and sour varieties of the fruit, the variety grown on the farm is extremely sour (making them perfect to eat after eating a miracle berry). We suddenly seemed to have an access of Bilimbi, so we harvested it. Bilimbi is way too sour to eat on its own so we made a juice, a smoothie, and a curry out of it.
Bilimbi curry.
Ingredients for bilimbi smoothie (a banana was also added at the last minute).
The other fruit I tried for the first time was Guava. I had only ever had it as a juice, and was intrigued by its smell when I was planting spinach in the fruit forest. Every time the wind blew there was a gust of guava aroma, it smelled exactly like Passion Fruit, so that’s what I began to search for. To my surprise, while looking for Passion Fruit I found I ripe guava laying on the ground.
Guava from fruit forest.
Blossom on a guava tree from the fruit forest.
Guavas are a small round, yellowish green fruit. There are varieties with a white flesh, but the variety on the farm, Ruby Red Guava, has a pink flesh. The fruit is native to parts of Mexico, Central America, and south America. Although guava smells very similarly to passion fruit, it tastes nothing like it. The fruit has a sweet, but mild melon flavor; and a slightly granular mouth feel, similar to a pear.
As mentioned above, this week I also planted spinach. Wildane uses spinach in the fruit forest as a ground cover to combat weeds. There is both purple spinach and green spinach growing. I planted green spinach along a newly built trellis in the fruit forest.
Transplanted spinach under trellis; as the spinach grows it will climb up the trellis.
Purple spinach used as a ground cover around a Longan tree in the fruit forest.
This week I also visited a few of Esther and Jimmy’s friends’ farms. First we visited Roy’s farm. Roy is a family friend who lives about 5 minutes away from Wildane. Unlike Esther and Jimmy, Roy’s farm focuses more on livestock (however he does a a substantial amount of papaya trees and other fruits and vegetables). There are goats that a used for milk and meat, chickens that are used for eggs and meat, and pigs that are used for meat as well. Roy likes to uses his animals as currency, exchanging them for everything from basic groceries to lumber for a new deck. Wildane regularly uses eggs from his farm, and recently exchanged him 100 fruit trees for a whole pig.
A few of the piglets on Roy’s farm. All of his pigs are black haired guinea pigs, and he has about 20 on the property.
A few of the chickens on his property that are used for meat and eggs.
Later in the week, we visited their friends Ray and Gwen, who live just as far as Roy. Their “farm” is more of an expanded garden. They have a few fruit trees, but not as much as Wildane. I got to try two new fruits: Jamaican Cherries, which taste like cotton candy and Jaboticaba, which taste like Welch’s grape juice. This farm is also where the first passion fruit I ever had was grown. Ray and Gwen also had papayas and mulberries that were fruiting at the time.
Lastly, I began to dig into the dark, hidden secrets of banana industries such as Chiquita and Dole. I will outline and go into further detail about what I learned in a post I will be creating this week entitled, Why You Shouldn’t Buy Bananas.
Leave a Reply