Ever seen a Maya ruin still covered in a mound of dirt awaiting future excavation? If so, you would have noticed all the trees growing out of the mound with gnarly roots that seem to be clutching the mystery of what’s beneath the hill with a fierce protectiveness. You guessed it. Those are ramon trees. It turns out that not only did the Maya intensively plant ramon trees in their forest gardens, but ramon trees love limestone, exactly the stone used to build Maya monuments. Plus ramon is the only species of native plant that is wind pollinated so you find ramon trees repopulating deforested areas throughout the Maya Biosphere Reserve. To a ramon tree, the abandoned Maya cities were fertile ground! Unlocking the secrets of the ramon is another challenge all together. I’ve spent the last year working intensively with a team in Guatemala to learn when the ramon fruit ripens and drops its seed, the ramon nut, to the ground. Then figuring out the right method to dry, roast, and grind the nut has been our ongoing challenge.
Uaxactun, a remote village north of the famous Maya ruin, Tikal, was once a Maya city that rivaled Tikal for dominance. Most of its ruins are still unexcavated. Homes in the village are built along an abandoned airstrip once used to transport chiclé, the sap that used to be the base of chewing gums like Chiclets.
Guatemala has strict conservation laws for the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Local groups like this conservation group in Uaxactun must receive permission to extract anything from the forest including ramon nuts. A management plan took a number of years to complete and receive approval from the government for harvesting ramon nuts.
Ramon trees grow 120 feet tall! Fortunately, the nuts fall to the ground where they can easily be gathered. Since it isn’t necessary to plant the trees, there is no investment necessary or time to wait until trees reach maturity. Ramon nuts can immediately bring income to the villagers including women and children, who can collect from trees growing near their homes.
The Ramon fruit has a soft rind reminiscent of thin citrus peel that ripens to an orange color before it falls to the ground. Monkeys love to eat the fruit that tastes something like an apricot and throw the nut on the ground since without any oil/fat content, it is too hard to chew.
We expected the nuts to fall between February and April but by May there still hadn’t been an abundant harvest. So some men went out to stay in camps in the forest for a couple of weeks to harvest the nuts. They build primitive shelters made from forest plants near a source of water since they can’t survive in the forest without water. Water collects from rain in ancient Maya aquadas, reservoirs built by the Maya to hold pools of water that were lined with clay to seal the porous limestone.
The night before we went out to visit the camps, it rained so hard the, tin roof on the little room where I slept became a deafening loud drum all night long. The next morning, we had to take an elevated suspension truck into the forest as horses couldn’t make it through the mud. Even so, clumps of mud kept flying up and hitting us like missiles as the tires churned up the wet dirt road and we had to keep stopping to cut through fallen trees.
Collectors hike out into the forest in search of various products such as Chatté, a leaf exported to the US for use in the floral industry, and chiclé, a gum that oozes from slashes made in the chiclé trees. Now ramon is bringing in new income to these villages where opportunities to earn money are hard to come by and next to impossible for women.		Chiclé Tree	Chatté Tree
During the drying process, the nuts turn from green to brown. We first tried a variety of ways to dry the nuts in the village. Everyone helped out to sort through the nuts and remove any bad pieces.
Ramon nuts are round and covered with a tan papery chaff when they first emerge from the fruit. The chaff must eventually be removed before roasting and it’s been a challenge to discover the best technique to accomplish this!
The villagers had to use fire drying to get the moisture out of the nuts because rain and humidity made air drying impractical. I worried about quality consistency using this drying method since the heat from the fire couldn’t be properly controlled. Eventually we learned that the fire gave an undesirable smoky flavor to the nuts and hardened their outer skin making them tough to roast. This is how it goes with product development. You learn from your mistakes and go on to improve what you’re doing!
To build support for the ramon nut collection, I met with village organizers and served them the Maya flavors. I told them abut my success harvesting leaves for The Republic of Tea’s rainforest tea that I created during the early years of my rainforest work.
In September, the harvest we had been waiting for all year suddenly arrived. The trees dropped their fruit abundantly near the village. Everyone got involved in harvesting nuts.
You’ve probably heard of fair trade in commodities like coffee and tea. In the case of ramon nuts, we are creating trade where no trade existed. The people are thrilled to receive money for nuts they collected that are free for the picking. Everyone gathers for the day of weighing and paying!
There were so many nuts, the villagers couldn’t keep up with the drying. So they asked us to let them just collect the green nuts so they could take advantage of the abundance of nuts to harvest.
We transported the nuts to a town where there were some commercial dryers for cardamom that use hot air blowing through screens. The nuts had to be turned over every half hour to dry. Men used shovels and covered their feet with clean sacks to protect the nuts from contamination. This method of drying worked out much better for the flavor of the nuts.
In another village called Ixlu, a group of women received a grant to buy land and build a facility to make ramon nut products like pancakes and masa for tortillas. On the left is Gladys, who was inspired by a workshop she took with the Equilibrium Fund, one of the NGO’s (non-governmental organization) that Teeccino supports by donating 1% of sales of the Maya flavors. Gladys cured herself of severe irritable bowel syndrome by daily drinking ramon nut flour in milk. Now she wants to help other Guatemalans eat this nutritious superfood! On the right is Michaelyn Bachhuber who runs ForesTrade Guatemala, the group I’ve been working with to develop the ramon nut trade.
With the women's cooperative in Ixlu, we erected some solar dryers to avoid the fire drying. It was a lot of work for the women as it still took a long time to dry the nuts. Now we’re exploring putting in a cardamom dryer for next year in both Uaxactun and Ixlu.
The goal is well dried ramon nuts and we achieved it in the end! But that is only the beginning of the next stage of work - getting the nuts ready to roast, grind and sift to produce finished granules. In next month’s newsletter, I’ll share the story and photos from that part of my journey. In the meantime, as I was leaving the Maya Biosphere reserve, a rainbow shimmered overhead and lit up the top of a ramon nut tree!

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