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Holding the bamboo pole in the vertical, proceed to end of the garden, hook the blade around the stem of the coconut and yank down quickly. Just as the coconut is about to hit the ground, jump 10 ft into the air still keeping the pole in the vertical. The reason for this is that the heavy nut hits the ground at a good speed and it will bounce twice and roll in every-which-way then the one you expect. If it hits your legs, serious injury will happen.
Repeat above four to five times.

With the hatchet break into the thick green fibrous skin to reveal the brown hairy shell of the coconut.
With hammer and none rust nail, pierce the nut and collect the juice.
With the machete, in one downward stroke split the nut in two.
Take the coconut scraper, this is a small stool which you sit on, it has a very sharp wide chisel protruding out, holding the half shell and counting fingers continuously scrap the hard flash out. The flakes will fall into a basin.
Now you have coconut milk and coconut meat for cooking.

Fast forward to Phuket. At 6.30 am I enter the local food market, open 7 mornings a week from 6am to noon.  I proceed to a stall where the above action has already been carried out. Here they fill a muslin bag with the nut flakes, moisten with a little of the milk and place the bag in a press. The muslin acts as a filter and out comes a good quantity of milk. I pay 20 cent for half a litre. My wife uses it as a stock for curries and stews. Of course you can pop down to the local supermarket and buy either cartons or cans of coconut milk but it’s not the same.

There is another variety of coconut that is smaller. These ones have the milk and flash inside the green shell and it is not fibrous. On the drinks page of any restaurant menu you can have this coconut with the top chopped off and a straw inserted for a refreshing drink. After drinking the milk you can scrap the flesh out with a spoon, it is soft. Or on the other hand you can have a chicken strew served inside the coconut, here as well the milk formed the stock. I have had this dish many times. Yummy.

Fast forward back to the garden and after many collections of the coconuts you are left with a fair heap of the green outer husks. Leave lying about until they turn brown, get the hatchet and chop them into 1 inch cubes. Fill a sack up and sell it to the nearest Garden Centre. A keen gardener will buy it for his potted flowers and plants. You cover the top of the soil in the pots with the cut up husks. After watering the plants this layer slows down the drying out of the soil, this is most important in the tropics.

So there you have it. Drinking, cooking and gardening all in one go.

Oh I forgot one other thing. When the husk is brown, it will smolder slowing giving off a lot of smoke. This is good for keeping the mossies away.

All of the above tools except for the press are at my father-inlaw’s house. The bamboo pole hangs under the house and all the others are in the kitchen.

Coconut trees grow straight up and are very high. Not like the ones you see bent over a tropical beach. Behind my father-inlaw’s house is jungle with many coconut trees. I have jumped out of my skin many times when out of the blue a nut falls, crashing through the foliage to bounce on the ground. It makes a terrible loud noise.

I must park my car well away from the trees.

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