Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Cork Truck

In Portugal we got to see a lot of cork trees and cork forrests. The cork gets peeled off a part of the tree, mostly just the bottom of the trunk, sometimes also some of the branches. They do the peeling every 9 years - at least that is what we learned in this region. To know when the tree was peeled last, they write the last digit of the year onto the trunk. 1 means the last peeling was in 2011 and 6 means that the last peeling was in 2006. 

This tree was very unusal as it was obviously harvested in two different years. 

The cork rind was stacked near the forrests and in barns to dry and then gets transportet to the places where bottle corks or cork clothing and home decoration, like pinboards and such, is made.

We followed a truck that was transporting cork rind. Since the shots were taken out of the moving car in bright sunlight, I do not have to explain their quality, right? But it still is worth seeing, I think.

a cork tree that is being double harvested

cork rind on a tree







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