Three weeks ago, grace and I had visited the plantain section of our backyard farm and we had seen and spoken about the bunch of bananas that were getting ready to ripen. We had wished there was someone with us who would do the heavy lifting needed to bring down the bunch but as we were alone, we could only lament about how the birds were going to have a field day enjoying the bananas.
Fast forward today, and my mum asks my brother to bring down the bunch of plantain, of course I'd follow for company and an extra hand where needed.
The plantain farm is well hidden by plantain leaves so you won't know what's happening there until you get closer. Once we got close enough to see, we discovered that a good number of the bananas had ripened and as grace and I predicted, the birds of the air were having a field day at them. Anyways, we're here to stop that enjoyment 😂😂.
Our plantain farm shares a fence with one of our neighbour, and most times they get the residue of leaves that fall into their compound. Over the years they haven't complained and we have a good understanding with them. This time, the plantain leaves had not only entered their compound but was dragging the barb wire used to demarcate the fence.
My brother quickly got to work cutting out the leaves that had entered their fence.
Once he was done with that, we moved to cutting down the bunch of bananas, but we realised it wasn't as easy as we had envisioned. The stem of the banana was stuck in-between the barbed wires and as it was a big bunch we couldn't cut it off outrightly at one end. This would cause the bunch to fall down and the banana would scatter and splatter everywhere, so we began strategizing.
I brought a small kitchen knife and my mum began to direct my brother on which areas to start cutting.
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We began cutting it up into smaller bundles. This way we could remove them in segments and still have our bananas.
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Finally we were able to extract the big bunch from the wire and cut it out. That's what we were doing here.
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Once we were done, we had a good harvest of bananas.
My mum said she's going to go give our neighbour who shares the plantain fence with us some bananas as a token of appreciation for their understanding of the situation. She always does this whenever she harvests any crop that shares fence with them. Be it bananas or plantains.
She selected the best looking smaller bundle and has kept it aside to give to them.
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While going through the bunch trying to remove spoilt bananas, I discovered some insects trying to have a taste of this yummy goodness. Of course they weren't aware I was taking shots of them and even if they did know, the bananas were of far more importance to them than what I was doing.
We've sorted out the ripe from the unripe and placed the unripe outside so the sun can act on them to quicken their ripening process. It's time to go devour the ripe ones.
Who wants some ripe yummy bananas??? 🤤 🤤
All photos taken with my Redmi 9C.