The Carob Tree

Haroupiá, known to you as the carob tree.  It grows into a huge shade tree here and the carobs hang off it like great beans, starting off green and eventually turning a dark, hard, brown.  At this stage they fall to the ground and are gathered by the locals as winter feed for goats and rabbits, and other livestock.

This is the carob tree exactly opposite us.  85 year old Vaso used to gather great sacks of carobs, from this tree and from the neighbours for her chooks, goats and rabbits.  Hidden in that tree is a large tree house.

If you look closely you can see bunches of brown carobs.

Vaso's son says he is going to make carob flour this year.  I tried one year, or rather I thought about making carob flour.  In reality it is quite a difficult process.  

You can also make a syrup out of it and it can be ground up and used like coffee.

One of our extended cousins was driving up and down the road yesterday carrying big sacks of carobs on the back of his motorbike.  He has goats and sheep I think.  Next doors carobs on one side are gathered by another friend and relative for his goats and the big carob tree on the english peole's land is usually gathered by Vaso.  Last year some rogue Albanians took the crop.  The carob bean is worth its weight in gold, almost.  It gives vitamins and minerals to the animals and saves their owners a lot of money in winter feed.

Vaso has slaughtered her goats and I think her rabbits too.  The carobs from her own tree will be enough for the chooks.

These are some carob beans I picked from Vaso's tree.  They are sweet and chewey, the taste being vaguely like a date

Down in Crete they are trying to get the carob tree onto the UNESCO list of Cultural Heritage.  They say the carob tree saved many lives in WW11 .  They ate it, boiled it, burnt it as firewood, made bread with it. The Cretans are renown for their very healthy life style.  They gather and eat greens from their fields, cultivate the olive and eat the oil mostly raw, gather herbs for cooking and for making tea, grow grapes and make wine, distill their own very potent raki and drink it in large quantities.  They keep bees, herd goats and make cheese, yoghurt and the dried pasta which here is called  hilopites or make the sour trahana which thickens stews and fills stomachs in a cold winter.

Mind you, most of rural greece lives this way.

But we were talking about carobs.

That's it folks.

We lived in Crete for three years.  One day I'll post about it