Las Adventuras de El More: The Inca Gold Brand

An unforseen earthquake (to be blogged about at a later date) hindered my blog efforts in my last weekend at the Inca Gold Brand farm. I am now back in Viña del Mar at Sebastian´s house, surfing couch until Chelsea arrives in Santiago (assuming all goes to plan) on Thursday. Olmué, the town of the farm, is still without power, but they have water. In Viña, we have power, but no water. A trade off I´m willing to make for the meantime.

(The Main House, Olmue, Chile)

The Inca Gold Brand is a farm owned by Ami Gomberoff. He has two locations, one in Washington State and one in Olmue, Chile. Ami and left and right hand men, Steve and Wayne, travel between the two farms during harvesting seasons, living in a perpetual summer. The primary fruit harvested at both farms is the Cuke-Asaurus (an Inca Gold Brand trademarked name for what is more commonly known as the horn fruit). The Cuke-Asaurus is a little bit sour if not completely rippened and tastes like a hybrid kiwi-cucumber. Inside the oddly shapped fruit is a bunch of slimmy green seeds, similar to a pomegranate, but the seeds are slightly larger and more moist. The texture is quite similar to caviar.

It is about a 15 minute drive from where we live, clean, and pack the fruit (see above) to the feild where we harvest it (see below). The Cuke-Asaurus are planted in long rows of mounded dirt with irrigation pipes running along top of the mounds and a plastic covering over the mound. The plant grows through holes in the plastic and the fruits rippen underneath the bushy leaves. I spent the majority of my time on the farm harvesting the fruit, which can be a demanding task on the knees and lower back as the plant lies so low to the ground.

(Where the Wild Cuke-Asaurus Things Are, Limanche, Chile)

(Break Time, Limanche, Chile)

Once we sort through the Cuke-Asaurus, tossing bad, sun-burned fruit and picking the larger, whitish/yellowish fruits, we place the ´keepers´in the blue and white crates pictured in the back of the trailer above. Depending on where we are in the field, it can be a pretty long walk with the heavy crates of fruit suspended over head to the truck. On a typical day, we wake up around 8 am for breakfast and are out to the field by 9 am. We take a short break around 11 am and head back to the house for lunch and siesta around 2pm. We go back out to the field for a couple hours around 4 pm, then eat dinner and do what we will with our free time.

(Pallets of crates of Cuke-Asaurus, Olmue, Chile)

When we arrive back at the warehouse with the fruit, it is unloaded on to pallets (see above) which are kept in a temperature controlled room (65 degrees F). We then sort the fruit according to how ripe it is (yellow/orange being very ripe, green being not ripe) and clean the fruit using paint brushes and a machine made by the handy men on the farm. Once the fruit is cleaned, it is packaged according to how large the fruit is and then shipped off to local markets in Chile or a certified shipping plant in Chile before it is sent to a distributor in the United States and shipped all over the country. (Keep an eye out for the Inca Gold Brand Cuke-Asaurus at your local markets!)