Coconut husk processing

My Canadian neighbors found a coconut shell processing plant on the way to Cihuatlan so I gave them a try the other day. What they do is spin the dry husks in a large wire drum and separate the stringy part from what becomes powder. You can see the baled stringy part below but what it's used for I don't know. The powder they bundle and sell locally for garden mulch. For some reason they didn't want me taking pictures so this is the only one I have. Very dirty - dusty work for the guys feeding the cocos into the machine.

A very heavy bale of mulch was $150 pesos

Just learned that the fiber is called Coir

Coco coir and coco peat is one of the promising coco-based products with a huge market potential due to its wide array of uses and its eco-friendly qualities. PKC Fibre Industry

And Wikipedia for it's many uses

Cleaning those palms

If you would have been watching my web cam a few hours ago you could have seen two late teens up that palm tree cleaning it on their way to a prize of about 10 coconuts ready for harvest. They used a ladder on this one (non-professionals) but another in the back supplied them with 10 more from ground level.

I love these exchanges of work for coco's. In my other house in Melaque I had a prolific and very tall tree that would produce 40+ coco's 3 times a year. A guy would cut the troublesome fronds, clean the dead stuff, clean the yard and haul it all away in exchange for the 40 coco's.

This time it started with a 7 year old neighbor helping me clean the side of the lot and street. I didn't know him, he just wanted to help. Then he spotted the 2 coco trees and said his big brother would clean and cut them. Very nice kids, all went well ... and now there is less garbage to fall into the yard