Sharing the misery of life! A short video.

[Grumpy John]

Some of you city folk must be getting pretty bored with being stuck at home....especially if you don't have Netfliks.  Don't worry, there is enough misery to go around.  

 

[Puchaiyank]

Life is what you make of it...a positive attitude goes a long way to smoothe over bumps in the road of life...

 

Remember this?  " I was complaining about not having shoes...until I met a man with no feet...

 

Count your blessings! Not your sorrows...

[Grumpy John]

11 hours ago, Puchaiyank said:

Life is what you make of it...a positive attitude goes a long way to smoothe over bumps in the road of life...

 

Remember this?  " I was complaining about not having shoes...until I met a man with no feet...

 

Count your blessings! Not your sorrows...

What you say is true.   But I am disappointed for my wife who puts in a lot of days working in the orchard for scant return.   

[AtlasAus]

Hey mate,

 

2BT a kilo, seriously. I have noticed here in Patts the mangoes have come down from as high as 80BT to some places at 25BT, but they don't look so good.... Avg of 50BT seems to get some decent ones. 

Clearly it is dry where you are too, the virus has over shadowed the drought problems we have... 

[Grumpy John]

Seriously!  And we have to take them to Noen Maprang which is 30km away.   Price in Pattaya off the back of your typical pick-up farmer/seller was 100baht for 3 kg back in the day.  200baht got you 7! There used to be a mango stall on Central Pattaya Rd which sold Khow Yeow Ma-Muang....and nothing else.  They must have made a fortune!  All they needed was mangoes,  sticky rice,  coconut milk and sugar.  But like most people who are mango lovers I brought it a couple of times a week!  ????

[watthong]

In Bangkok mango season started a couple of weeks ago. Managed to get some decent-sized - filling the palm of your hand - mangoes (under 150 baht for a bunch as you can see in the photo - not-suay looking, but looking naturally ripe to me).  I guess the gold type, tasting delicious as always. Thanks for the video clip, now I know what farming life feels like (always fancied some vignerons in the south of France!)

[Grumpy John]

5 hours ago, watthong said:

In Bangkok mango season started a couple of weeks ago. Managed to get some decent-sized - filling the palm of your hand - mangoes (under 150 baht for a bunch as you can see in the photo - not-suay looking, but looking naturally ripe to me).  I guess the gold type, tasting delicious as always. Thanks for the video clip, now I know what farming life feels like (always fancied some vignerons in the south of France!)

Their "B" grade a best because of their appearance but grade has little to do with taste!   I have eaten mangoes that look far worse than your selection and they taste great.  The orchardists here with Yellow mangoes are getting 8-10 baht a kg at the moment.  We don't have any more yellow mangoes to sell. 

[BritManToo]

^^^ They were selling some like that in the road near my house.

I was thinking I'll buy some for 20bht ......... they wanted 60bht ...... no way ..... I just walked away.

[FarFlungFalang]

12 hours ago, Grumpy John said:

What you say is true.   But I am disappointed for my wife who puts in a lot of days working in the orchard for scant return.   

She gets a return?My wife pays a lot of money to work her ring off.Actually that's not true,I pay the bank a lot of money so my wife can work her ring off!That's better.

[BritManToo]

13 hours ago, Grumpy John said:

What you say is true.   But I am disappointed for my wife who puts in a lot of days working in the orchard for scant return.   

Fill your pickup and sit by a main road selling them.

Slice an dry them in the sun, dried mango attracts a premium price.

Can them in syrup, they'll keep forever, or you can sell the canned product at markets.

Make jam ...........

 

Plenty of things you can do with the crop, no need to give them away.

Edited April 13, 2020 by BritManToo

[Farma]

In our area mangoes are selling at 20 Baht a kilo. Ripe at 25 a kilo. We have a box of the father in laws mangoes in front of our shop and sell 20+ kilos a day. We aren't a food shop.

 

Don't give up. Look at your local Thai Facebook pages. The ones for my area have plenty of mangoes for sale all at 20 a kilo, sometimes cheaper for bulk buys. Advertise on there. 

[Grumpy John]

6 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Fill your pickup and sit by a main road selling them.

Slice an dry them in the sun, dried mango attracts a premium price.

Can them in syrup, they'll keep forever, or you can sell the canned product at markets.

Make jam ...........

 

Plenty of things you can do with the crop, no need to give them away.

Been through it all with the wife.  We will do sun dried this time and make mango chutney in a few different variations to try out value adding....which I have been harping on for years.   My point is selling to a buyer is not a good practice.  The buyers reward is many times greater than the sellers for a fraction of the work.  And just because mum and dad did it is no excuse for continuing to do it. 

[Chazar]

Grow  different  varieties and set up roadside  stall 

[Grumpy John]

6 hours ago, Farma said:

In our area mangoes are selling at 20 Baht a kilo. Ripe at 25 a kilo. We have a box of the father in laws mangoes in front of our shop and sell 20+ kilos a day. We aren't a food shop.

 

Don't give up. Look at your local Thai Facebook pages. The ones for my area have plenty of mangoes for sale all at 20 a kilo, sometimes cheaper for bulk buys. Advertise on there. 

She uses 2 phones at the same time!  I am guessing she knows every Thai site there is!  We aren't giving up....but it would be nice to live in Mueang Phitsanulok with cafes, restaurants, shopping centres, entertainment, etc.  I could have my stuff packed in an hour!  I can only dream.  Changing Thai minds...it takes a bit of time, years maybe???  Around here at the moment every second house is doing mango roll-ups.  After the mixture is sun dried they roll em up and stack them in little plastic takeaway boxes.  Everyday mare comes home from the wat with a plastic bag full of takeaway boxes full of roll-ups.  I think the wifes daughter is a bit smarter.  She does chocolate brownies, Thai style,  with real chocolate and a variety of toppings sliced almonds, cashews, split in half Oreos, chocolate chips and white fat/sugar chips.   Made 500 over 2 weeks.  Sold the lot!  Even gave the wife 100 baht for electric usage...I nearly fell of the banana lounge when I saw that!

[Grumpy John]

13 minutes ago, Chazar said:

Grow  different  varieties and set up roadside  stall 

I will tell you how many times I have said that this year....dozens of times!  We have 5 varieties now.  Here is how it goes, I say to her:  We will pick some mangoes to ripen up ourselves to sell in a few days and some the day before sale to allow people to ripen themselves. I'll drive the pick-up up to Wang Sai Phun and park outside Esso.  We hire a girl on a daily basis to work with you.  We give the Esso girls some mangoes as a thank you for using their loo.   And I ride the bike back to the village then return about 4pm.   Doesn't sound to hard.  Worth a shot ay?  Apparently not according to Tik.  For the life of me I cannot see the problem!

[ExpatOilWorker]

3 kg for 50 baht in Bangkok. 

 

[mikemi]

2bht a kilo? i was told is was 20bht a kilo

 

is this because of the virus or what? sounds very low 

[watthong]

On 4/15/2020 at 7:35 PM, ExpatOilWorker said:

3 kg for 50 baht in Bangkok. 

 

Now I know where "my" mangoes come from, the middlewoman sellers buy them at the truck and resell them at the market at 1/3 markup= 3 kilos 75 baht. Then the sellers at my soi resell them for another 1/3 markup at 35-40 baht per kilo...ie the nearest they get to my place, the higher the price. Regardless, I grab them whenever I see plump ones.  (Anxiously waiting for lychees...they'll come around May I think.)

 

One question: don't them fruits get squashed when stacking up to the ceiling like that? I know mangoes are hardy when they are not yet ripe, but still I am always looking for bruises.

Edited April 17, 2020 by watthong

[Grumpy John]

12 hours ago, mikemi said:

2bht a kilo? i was told is was 20bht a kilo

 

is this because of the virus or what? sounds very low 

There are no buyers coming to our area to buy green mangoes.  20 baht was the price of gold mangoes and #4's but their selling for 8-10 baht now not that we have any left. We normally have buyers calling into the orchard to check progress and calling the wife but now nothing!  Border trade is bug ard for now.   

[Grumpy John]

2 hours ago, watthong said:

Now I know where "my" mangoes come from, the middlewoman sellers buy them at the truck and resell them at the market at 1/3 markup= 3 kilos 75 baht. Then the sellers at my soi resell them for another 1/3 markup at 35-40 baht per kilo...ie the nearest they get to my place, the higher the price. Regardless, I grab them whenever I see plump ones.  (Anxiously waiting for lychees...they'll come around May I think.)

 

One question: don't them fruits get squashed when stacking up to the ceiling like that? I know mangoes are hardy when they are not yet ripe, but still I am always looking for bruises.

Bruised mangoes!   Not sure I have seen a bruised one.   When we run out of plastic boxes we just fill up the trailer...but admittedly they are still slightly green when we pick.  

[ExpatOilWorker]

3 kg for 20 baht in Bangkok. 

 

[Grumpy John]

4 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

3 kg for 20 baht in Bangkok. 

 

As long as they taste great who cares if one has bad eyesight!  ????What we do is cut up quite a few and park them in the freezers in 2 of our 3 fridges.   What we needed this year is a large chest freezer!   The point being I love eating frozen mango.  It's like ice-cream but hard as he11 straight out of the freezer.  I tuck in straight away with a knife and spoon,  but after 3 or 4 minutes It's just spoon.