Palm Tree Trimming and Young Coconuts

Recently a man was hired to climb palm trees close to our house and cut down branches that were dying and threatening to fall out of the trees. Those trees are amazingly tall, but climbing barefoot with the help of a simple harness around his waist, he was able to get up the trees quite quickly, and to use both hands for cutting while the harness and his feet held him in place.

After he finished trimming branches, we asked him if he would climb our coconut palm tree and trim a few branches for us (every once in a while a dying branch will fall with a tremendous crash, and I’m always so glad no one is standing beneath it).

While he was up there, he cut down some young coconuts for us too.

Delighted children (well, and adults too) started to gather around…

…and once the tree-trimmer got back down to the ground, he used his machete to cut the ends off the coconuts so we could drink the coconut water from the inside. It tasted like water, except slightly sweet and coconutty.

The white flesh at the very inside of the young coconut is not yet hard and sweet like the flesh of the mature coconut; it’s softer, and you can scrape it out with a spoon. It tastes good! But, you have to have a good sharp machete to be able to cut away the hard outside layers and get to the very middle of the coconut, where the good stuff is.