the curious case of the cashew

the cashew harvest has begun and this year several of the trees are bearing abundantly. we have 10 fruit bearing cashew trees spread around the garden. and about as many trees that are too young. but they grow fast even in the pure sand which we have as soil. They seed themselves and require very little care but they are susceptible to fungal attacks and do not live particularly long. they tend to have many branches close to the ground so in order to be able to get underneath them we must support the lowest branches. they continually shed copious amounts of leaves so we must clean out the area where the cashews fall to be able to harvest them. other than that the trees grow as if they were wild

the trees begin to flower in the beginning of january or maybe earlier. we have several varieties of cashews, some red and some yellow. they have rather inconspicuous flowers. red flowers means red cashew apples

while yellow flowers yield yellow cashew apples

cashew trees bear two kinds of fruit, the cashew apple and the true cashew fruit which hangs under the apple. the true fruit develops the most first. but while it's a true fruit and the cashew is the single seed of the fruit, it's not actually a true nut. the tree still flowers while the first fruits develop. all in all it's a botanic curiousity, though a tasty one at that

in february the cashew apples start to swell. it happens very quickly. within 2-3 days the one in the middle of the photo will swell and become as large as the one next to it on the right

and in another couple of days the cashew apple which is botanically classified as an accessory fruit ripens and is ready to pick. the apple is very juicy and because of the juice it is locally prized at least as much as the 'nut'. in Goa, a little south of here the juice is fermented and distilled to make cashew feni. a potent somewhat pungent drink famed as much for medicinal benefits as for the high alcoholic content. but the juice, or neero can be sucked right out of the freshly picked apple. it's a great astringent drink but should be consumed in the early morning as the sun and heat of the day can make it quite irritable to the throat. the taste is vaguely reminiscent of grapefruit juice but more astringent and less sour

the apple spoils even quicker than it matures and if not picked the same day it ripens it will surely attract birds and insects. there are far more fruits than we can consume and they spoil so fast that we don't bother much with them and let the birds enjoy them. many species of birds come to the trees and there is often a scene and photo opportunity for us bird lovers

while the apple spoils quickly the seed of the true cashew fruit, which is what we call a cashew, keeps for a long time. there is no hurry to harvest them and it is easiest to let most of them fall to the ground and collect a couple of times per week. the season lasts until the end of April and slowly tapers off well into May. when we have collected and removed the fruits we may get up to 100 kilos of cashews in the shell on a good year. removing the seed is a tedious process so we deliver most of the crop to one of several dealers in town. we do keep a fair amount to burn ourselves and the outer layers are totally black when we pound them to crack them open and remove the seed. nothing beats the flavor of the freshly harvested and roasted cashews. after extracting the cashews local fishermen use the toxic acidic black cashew nut shell liquid which is something like creosote to waterproof their boats and prevent algae growth.

last year was not a good year and some of the cashews were ruined by a fungus which i believe is spread by ants. there are so many ants on the trees that we get the feeling they believe the trees belong to them. perhaps they really do and we are continually cutting away dead branches killed by fungi. but this year has started off much better with lots of fruit already on the ground and much more coming daily in the trees and those are for us