Last week when we went to harvest our fruit in Hoskote we were surprised to see beer bottles hung up on the branches of the fruit trees. Bonny a teetotaller was completely annoyed and said "what the heck is he trying??"
I chuckled, as I understood what Rajanna the caretaker was achieving with the bottles.-- he gets most annoyed to see good fruit wasted on the ground by parakeets, and Seven Sister Babblers. So this was his way of scaring them off. The bottles clanked in the breeze and there were no fruit marauders anywhere. The dratted things come even for our tamarind -- don't really eat it, just make a huge mess. Tamarind fruits for us only once a year in Hoskote and I have planted only the best -- Salem Tamarind. I can barely bring it home and my customers snap it up as its so flavourful and fresh.
Kgs of Salem Tamarind every week!
We are enjoying the farm for a few more months till the new owner finishes all the formalities and the money is transferred to the boys. I get bags of sweet Thai tamarind, the nellie kai, sour limes, chickoos ofcourse and the last of the ramphals. The mango crop has begun to flower and in a few weeks we;'ll spray them and put up the yellow bottles with the fruit fly lures to safeguard our organic mango crop. I eat ALL the sweet tamarind. I mean this is my last chance and I save all seeds for Fr Valerian Vaz the Provincial of the Saligao seminary. He will grow saplings and make some good money ( hopefully) from that for the seminary.
Sour sops have begun!
We had a tall Sour sop tree in the Hayes rd compound and that's where I had my first taste of Sour sop with my Nanna Augusta. What a wonderland of fruit this garden was and we never had to buy any sort of fruit, just pick them off ripe from the tree like I am doing now in Hoskote.
