The guy climbing up there is a coconut plucker. Around every three months, Jay's sister calls this fellow to come for another harvest. The trees are always producing fruit so the plucker has to pick only those that are just right. He generally cuts the old branches that have dried up too. These all come crashing down to earth as he wields a very sharp knife.
First, he has to get up to the coconuts. This guy is an expert at shimmying the trunk with nothing other than a few rags wrapped around his feet. He wears no safety strap or other gear.
The ground starts to get littered with branches and coconuts. A group of 6 or 8 often explode in different directions when they hit the ground. Falling coconuts are lethal, so we stay away from the current tree when collecting the coconuts into piles.
After he comes down from a tree he marks it as completed by tying a part of a leaf around the base. Today, the plucker completed 13 trees. This is several less than during our previous visits as a few trees were threatening the house. In fact, during one storm one was knocked down and hit the eves. It did not do big damage but could've proven more dangerous. The offending trees were removed.
The plucker now charges SR 200 per tree. That equivalent is close to $US 11.00 for about an hour and a half of work. There was not a very big yield this time.
Sri Lanka cooking requires A LOT of coconuts. In fact, Jay's sisters cook for themselves but each uses two or three per week. So, Jay's younger sister picked suitable ones to keep. As we'll be doing some travelling, she set aside 33 for their own use.
The rest are sold to a re-seller who comes with a truck and hauls them off. The going rate for coconuts in the husks is around SR 75 each at present, or around a US quarter.
The small pile contains fewer than eighty. So, this will yield approximately SR 6000, or a bit more than eighteen dollars.