We are now in Kerala the south of India which is literally translated as the "Land of Coconuts"
and we are going to have a look at all different uses the coconut tree provides to the indigenous
people here.
Now this coconut just feel, obviously this is perfectly ripe it just has fallen off the
tree.
Luckily it dint fall on my head I was just standing next to it.
So I am going to use it now and it has got plenty of water in it as well.
So I am just going and peel it now, it will be fun to see how to do that.
In order to peel your coconut, in order to get the coconut that we are used to - to these
guys.You want to be able to use a tool like this.
You just place it up there where it touches to the tree and this allows you to actually
peel it - you can see there is an actually coconut growing so I am going to use that
to try and grow it and that will be a bit of fun so I will put that one aside, but you
generally get the idea -it's just a matter of pressing it in and that way you can actually
peel it - simply like that.
Of course there are different ages of coconut trees as well this one is a very very young
one, it is freshly planted.
They usually plant the coconut in a hole there by made kind of a shallow there where the
water can collect and over there you have the one that is a couple of years older, they
grow up quite fast they grow up to 50 meters 40 meters up in the air, they grow really
really tall you can see there are coconuts growing on it -- which is quite nice to see.
Legs first -- ya ya.
Wow this is very difficult I better come down, do you practice for long?
Ya ya..
You have to be strong.
When other people try to climb in the first starting they grow down straight.
May be I will practice every day and I will get it.
It's a nice coconut.
Hmmm...
Of course there are many uses for the coconut tree and you can see they are using leafs
for making huts -- this is a fisher mans hut.
They also use this kind of woven mats for making kind of fences around their houses
so there are many uses for the actual coconut tree itself.
That's good hahaha...
Now the next step is to take the coconut and it was in the sun so most of the moisture
content has evaporated.
Now the other this is with this coconut nothing is wasted her, what they do is they use this
kind of hairy bits for scrubbing the plates; the wood itself goes for firewood in the kitchen.
Then of course the coconut itself is cut up in thin kind of slices and they just kind
of make it into a pile and then they dry it down and I have been helping with that for
the last few days.
The next step is we are going to the actual mill where we are going to turn this in to
coconut oil.
You've got 3 different grading systems grade 1, grade 2 and grade 3.
That's grade 1 on the left this would be grade 3 this kind of rotten stuff is used for making
soap, they scrape it off and then they use it for soap making.
They use grade 1 for making oil also they have different drying stages for grade 1 so
you have day 1, day 2 and day 3, By day 3 the coconut pieces are so dry that you can
just break them and all that is remaining is the oil itself.