Almost killed ourselves with poison!

We found gold! The mother load of the wild almond trees that line the river banks originated from here!

Greetings to all and this is my first post in the Gems community.
Blame my good friend @tattoodjay for inviting me here Lol. We are on steem since 2017 and the income from every post on our blog goes to our charity.
But let me tell you about our great recent escape here!

This is the last farm in our area, situated right next to the mountains. It is an Olive farm and in the center of the photo you can see the olive trees!

Here it is! The full wild almond tree and it must be at least 100 years old!

Wow! Obviously we picked a bucket full of the wild almonds and Marian (my wife) dreamt of making cakes and biscuits!

Plenty almonds just waiting for us to pick them. We can even give most of them to the homes that care for orphans!

But there's a catch here! THEY ARE POISON!

Here's another old almond tree and you can see by its roots that it drinks water from the river!

Look at the size of this old almond lady!

Now about the poison!
We were so excited and walked so far to find these beauties. Oh man we could feed a village with the almonds.
Until Marian decided to research their origin!

If you eat wild almonds you will die!

A bit of history!

"Wild Almond, scientific name; "Brabejum stellatifolium"
In 1652 Jan van Riebeeck arrived in the Cape from Holland...There was little regard for the local Khoi-Khoi people, who grazed their cattle in the area. And conflict soon broke out. The Wild Almond trees' fruit formed a significant part of the Khoi-Khoi diet and the KhoiKhoi continued to invade the settlers area to get at the fruit".

"About the Wild Almond.
This is a member of the Protea family (Proteaceae), with it's closest relative being the Australian Macadamia Tree. This unusual link points back millions of years to when Australia and Africa both formed part of the continent Gondwana. When Gondwana split up over 130 million years ago, the Protea family was split up and Brabejum is now the only surviving branch of this family tree on the African continent".

"While we associate the name with delicious nuts, these are definitely not for consumption as they are poisonous. The Khoi-Khoi, who included them as part of their diet, had discovered how to remove the poison from the fruit by soaking them in water for several days, and then boiling and roasting them. The Khoi-Khoi were experts at this process, and this definitely should not be tried at home. The old settlers in the Cape learnt the Khoi-Khoi way of preparing the Wild Almond fruit as a sort of "coffee". Many individuals were poisoned and died from consuming it".
Source

Finally, here's a view of the farm and the start of the mountain.

Note; All photos are my own, unedited and only cropped for uploading purposes.
The source of the section in inverted commas ("") was duly source cited.

We hope that you enjoyed the pictures and thank you for visiting a post by @papilloncharity

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