The Really Cool Organic Shopping Experience

Before leaving the Galapagos we visited a local organic farm to get some fresh produce. After the paltry selections we available in the little tiendas in the towns perhaps we got a little too excited about the fresh produce. We do that.

The farm experience really, really neat. It is a family run operation a half an hour from town on Isabela. We were greeted by one of the family members and a whole passel of friendly exuberant dogs.

We expected to visit a shack near the house and pick out some vegetables and fruits from an assortment of picked produce. Nope, the farmer, who spoke no English, grabbed a machete and some gardening shears and led us into the fields.

He was familiar with provisioning cruisers and what we wanted fruit and veggies that would ripen over time so we had some fresh goods off shore for as long as we could. So he walked around, pointing, asking and telling. Pineapple? Ocho dias. A whack of the machete and the fresh pineapple was ours.

Walking around he cut fresh sugar cane for all of us to chew on while we shopped, and we gathered peppers, tomatoes, papaya, melon, watermelon, hot peppers, a huge bunch of bananas, spices and herbs and so on. Our favorite were the oranges right from the tree. I’ve not been able to get my kids to eat oranges, well hardly ever. Danielle only just started with a good lot we got in Panama, Will had no interest. The fresh oranges off the tree? I think Will ate two on the spot as the farmer hooked them out of the tree, and two or three more before the end of the day on the boat.

The Roulette Part

Now, eleven days later we’re nearing the end of the fresh things.

Most of it has been excellent, but some has been game has been more like Russian Roulette, where you don’t know quite what you are getting. The quality of the produce was generally excellent, but sometimes our storage techniques were lacking. And some things seemed to ripen faster than we expected.

The bananas, the huge stunning amount of bananas, worked out well. We ended up losing only about a dozen of them. We ate tons and we got my sisters banana bread recipe which makes for an excellent watch snack. The entire front of the boat smelled like bananas. We were unable to hang the bunch thought or we might not have lost the dozen or so that we did.

Melons weren’t such a success. The local melon, well wasn’t what we were used to coming from cantaloupe and honeydew backgrounds. We ate one and didn’t love it, the other two went squishy the next day but we were not heartbroken. Just a different flavor that we didn’t appreciate.

Watermelons were decent but ripened fast. The second one was perhaps a little past its prime.

The papayas were similar, the first one turned yellow and was ready right freaking now, it’s mate unfortunately did the same thing before we noticed it was squishy.

Tomatoes have had a high mortality rate due to our bad handling of them, we don’t really have a place to put them to ripen where they will not roll around under foot all the time.

Scallions we ate some and the rest are hanging on.

The basilwell we didn’t get to make the pesto in time.

We have no idea why we even bought the mint other than it smelled so good. Its not like we’ll be making mint juleps under way.

We still have a lot of limes. Again, no cocktail hour off shore

The oranges have been the best, but are now getting challenging. Since everyone loved them so much we bought a lot. They aren’t as sweet as a California navel, but are tangy and tart with a different, excellent flavor. They are also green and juicier than any orange we’ve ever seen, really messy to eat actually. But worth it.

Following instructions on how to store citrus Kathy wrapped them all up individually in foil. Now, some of them are goingpast. So now it is a bit of a toss of the dice, we discovered that an orange that has gone soft on the outside isn’t too good on the inside either. You can sort of almost tell from the foil wrapped outside but you can’t really SEE if you have a delicious treat or a foul squishy mess until you open it up.

Overall we think it was the best we could do on fresh things for a trip like this. The quality was so much better than in a store and you can not argue with the freshness. But we will need to figure out a slightly better way to store some of these things for the next time.

We miss the bananas already, and we are going to miss the oranges some time soon.