Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

CHAPTER V HARVESTING AND PREPARATION FOR THE MARKET Harvesting the Crop. The cacao tree usually bears at five years, may be considered mature at ten or twelve years, and continues to bear for thirty or forty years. This is only true if reasonable care is taken—the average life of a tree on the Gold Coast being much less. At all seasons of the year a few pods are ripe for picking, but in most countries the principal harvest is either in the concluding months of the year or in the spring, thus the crop is heaviest from October to December in the Gold Coast, San Thomé and Bahia, and heaviest from March to May in Ecuador. Having studied the cacao tree one becomes curious to know how the fruit will be picked. The trees are not stout enough to bear climbing, the pods do not fall when ripe, and to drag them off, as they do in Para, with a loop of rattan, inj ures the “ cushions ” from which they spring. While those on the trunk and lower branches are cut off with a sharp cutlass, a special picker is used to bring down those high in the branches. This consists of a knife on a long rod, and as wounds on the tree are dangerous to its health, considerable ingenuity has been exerciscd in making a knife which easily cuts off the pods, but which cannot, however carelessly håndled, cut the bark of the tree. This curious method of picking the fruit, by means of a knife at the end of a long pole—the instrument is called a goulet, cocoa hook or podadera—is used all over the world, and is, as far as the author knows, peculiar to 51