Cacao Tree Survival

In a presentation by Ben Rasmussen over at Potomic Chocolate, he gave a nice overview of what they do there and what got him into chocolate.  It's a story you will probably hear from most every craft chocolate maker if you talk to them long enough.  Craft chocolate is a passionate business and you don't stay in it simply for the money.

One of the things he brought out was his tree.  You could see it in the background of the video and it was a nice looking tree.  At one point though it had lost all of its leaves and was merely a twig sticking out of the ground.  Someone said that it wasn't necessarily lost though and to just keep it watered.  It may well grow back, and it did.

That's the same thing I have done with some of my trees.  They've had a rough beginning to some of them and, as you can see on this little guy, if you keep them watered they can indeed grow back.  He's even better looking now but this picture really shows how resilient a cacao tree can be.  Of course not all of the trees had this outcome.  Some of them really did die, shrivel up, fall over, and sink into a swamp.  We won't talk about those any further though.  This little guy is the bright spot in the whole tree growing process.  Of course he doesn't come close to Claude (my wife decided the largest and most healthy of the trees needed a name) who is now nearly as tall as I am.  Some day though, with proper care, he will be just as big.