Friday, July 10, 2009

A Developing Story


This is a longan tree on the property that we lived on in Thailand. It's one of many, many on the property. You can see that the thing is heavy with fruit, and within a couple of weeks it will be ready to harvest.

There's a problem this year however. Our former landlady, Khun Aemon, can't find anyone to harvest the fruit. In former years, and each of them, a team would come in around the second week of August and for at least two days there would be people climbing around the trees cutting longans and other groups of people on the ground arranging them in one kilogram bunches to be sold. The crew boss paid Aemon over twenty thousand Baht for the privilege. That's a lot of longans, they ultimately sell for about twenty Baht a kilo.

Within a month, I can tell you, this will be a world class mess. In past years, after the harvest, the remaining longans would fall and rot and the smell was very disagreeable. This year that fate may, probably will, befall the entire crop, and the smell should be unimaginably bad.

I'm hoping that some last minute solution presents itself.

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