It has been a couple of years now that hazelnuts have become an ingredient in our journeys. Perhaps in part because we have had the privilege to visit the beautiful parts of Northern Turkey that border the Black Sea, where 70 percent of hazelnuts are produced. Or maybe it has been our visits to the beautiful and rugged Caucasus mountains of Georgia, where, when we went through, a Georgian gifted me with hazelnuts handpicked by his father that very day.
When I lived in South America, I did not even really know what a hazelnut was. Now I have discovered that it is the primary ingredient of the famous Nutella and is also loaded with many different nutritionally beneficial ingredients.
As the entrepreneur that I am, as we have been traveling and seeking to establish our travel education business in this world as a model of CASA AGAPE (which took 20 years to really become functional—hopefully, this time around our model will be different and a little faster, as FATHER TIME does put limits on everything), I have been talking with friends who import seeds and dehydrated fruits who are very interested in the prospect of building bridges between Turkey, Eurasia, and the Americas. It seems the central ingredient for building this bridge is hazelnuts.
We are convinced that we are called to be salt and light and that everywhere we go, we should truly have a positive impact on the people we visit, their culture, and be sensitive to how we can help them to have LIFE. I find that so many of us are in the process of transformation and feel (and sometimes are) in the stage of the “ugly” caterpillar or in the cocoon. What we desire is to help genuine “transformation” take place where we can take wings and fly high in the sky as beautiful butterflies.
In order for this to occur, I understand that we, as people, need to be completely impacted. We are integral beings made of physical bodies, hearts, and spirits that all need to be impacted and aided together.
A couple of weeks ago, we were invited, by surprise, to help some friends who were friends of our friends who have a hazelnut business. We were right on time for the big harvest day when, with these big, loud machines, the hazelnuts are deshelled.
Since in the educational travel business we are developing, we are advocates of ethno-tourism (and Casa Agape is also a model of appropriate technology and permaculture farm), I was excited to have the opportunity to delve into the process of hazelnuts.
We started the day with a delicious kahvaltı (the Turkish people are famous for their extensive breakfasts that truly include ingredients of many varieties). We then went and learned the process of preparing hazelnuts to be sold and then eventually transformed into hazelnut spread, Nutella, etc.
In total honesty, the work was not easy, but it was a really good opportunity to develop relationships with the locals, and as we worked side by side, they began to try to communicate with us. This is definitely an adventure when one does not know the language. Yet there are always ways to successfully communicate, and so we had a full day of fun and work where we also got to make friends with locals that we would have never had an opportunity to do otherwise.
This is truly going off the beaten trail and genuinely experiencing other cultures and languages and making new friends that one would never experience in other contexts.
And maybe relationships are developing to build bridges of export and import between the Americas, Turkey, and Eurasia that could expand and develop new trade routes and opportunities in the future!