Oh no! Just as I thought my cacao pods were coming along nicely—they almost smelled like chocolate a few days into the process—they began to mold! Everything molds during rainy season! My shoes, my backpack, my jewelry, and now my cacao! And after I remedied the mold issue they began to sprout! The embryo of the bean is supposed to shrivel and die in the fermentation process, not grow! But alas, I guess everything just grows in the rainforest. Also, the cacao beans began to be a breeding ground for little maggots. After assessing the myriad of problems, I had to toss all the beans into the forest area just outside the lodge (aka our non-food compost pile). I had two chocolate recipes to try too. One was a truffle recipe which used the whole bean, and the other was a real chocolate recipe. I have a new fermenting recipe to try for next time, and this one is full proof…I hope.
Also, I just learned how to control pests using a biodynamic method. It involves skinning the pest, such as a rat or squirrel, and charring the skin in a wood fire until it’s just ashes. Then, the ashes are spread around the plants and fields that need inoculation. Gustavo was using it to control rats in our food garden and now we’re going to use it against squirrels in our cacao fields, which are being ravished by squirrels and fungus. I was given instructions on how to char the skin just in case a dead squirrel is delivered to me this weekend when Gustavo isn’t going to be around. The only thing I didn’t get instructions on was how to skin a squirrel. It can’t be hard, right? I dissected rats in bio lab, so this shouldn’t be too far off.
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