As part of the research for his compost project Martin has been going around to different farmers and talking to them about buying the product.  One of the farmers is an organic farmer and lives in a place called “Palo Blanco” which is in the mountains almost an hour from Chulucanas.  Here he is outside his home with Nina.

Last weekend he invited Martin to have a look at his farm as he was keen for Martin to give him some advice on a few things.  Nina and I went with him.  We had a lovely meal with his family and few other farmers.  It was so beautiful there as you can see.

This man has a number of crops on his farm, including mangos, limes and cocoa. Conventional farming tends to only have one crop but Martin tells me it is more sustainable to be growing a number of different crops together.  Cocoa is originally from this region although now most of it is produced in Africa.  I found all this pretty fascinating as I am pretty ignorant about all this stuff especially cocoa.  I had no idea how it looked and tasted as a fruit.  If you are like I was here are some pictures.

This is the cocoa pod.

When you open it up there are the cocoa beans.  A typical pod has about 40 to 50 beans (but you need about 600 beans to make 1kg of chocolate).  They are covered in a mucous type substance that is rather sweet.  You can suck on the bean and it tastes lovely.  Don’t do what I did though when the farmer gave it to me and bite in it.  For one it is disgusting, very bitter and dry and for two people will laugh at you.  You can see it here.

Once you have sucked it you are left with the bean.  The beans go through a rather long drying process (in the sun is best so as not to ruin the flavour with smoke) and then are shuffled and trodden on (usually by human feet) before they are sent overseas to be roasted and then ground into cocoa butter which makes the chocolate we all enjoy.

Maybe you find that little lesson on cocoa boring or you already knew it but I thought it was interesting.