The Wielers go to Africa: Guava Pickin' Time

Hi Everyone. We'll it's been a while since our last post, and now we are officially into Winter. Brrr. It's not really so bad, low teens at night and mid-twenties during the day, but we've also had some unseasonably cool nights, below 10c, so we went out a bought a couple of space heaters since our house (or any other house) doesn't have central heat. We didn't know that the first heater we bought is essentially a big halogen light. Imagine our surprise when we turned it on and it lit up the room! Still, it's warm enough to toast marshmallows on.

The beginning of winter also means that the guavas in the orchard are getting ripe, which means that it’s time to pick them and ship them off to market. Because C4L is in an orchard, we can’t let the guavas go to waste. What C4L makes on guavas in a year almost covers the salary of a gardener. Besides, when guavas fall off the tree they stop smelling sweet and yummy and start smelling really bad, so you have to do something with them. We pick the guavas and then run them down to a local fruit juice processor. So far this year we have taken in three loads, one load a week, as it’s just the beginning of the season. Later in the season we will be going more often.

Here’s what a guava looks like.

Here is Vusi, pickin’ guavas. Vusi and the other Vusi can go through the orchard in about half a day, so we pick in the morning and deliver in the afternoon.

The infamous “Bakkie”. Bakkie is an Afrikaans word which describes all pick-up trucks. Our Bakkie is getting pretty beat up, but still has enough juice to haul guavas.