We might often heard this proverb being mentioned so many times in tweet, instagram, and even written on the wall of hipsters cafes. But do you really understand what it means? Before we think it is just a cool phrase too, but now it is truly our key of  success. This proverb has truly help us to transform our perspective on many things available in Arumdalu since we opened our door for our guests.

In Belitung it is often said don’t go to the beach during the stronger wind season as Belitung seashore can get an overload of seaweed washed to the seashore during high tide. Well true to what it says, every morning during the high tide season there are seaweed washed to the shore. Every morning our dedicated cleaning team cleaned the beach from one side to the other side (before you know it!).  We brought them to the shore, washed them with ground water, and then put them underground to decompose. It was a routine every stronger wind season.

It is a routine until one day we notice the condition of the soil surrounding the place where we buried the seaweed becomes more fertile, shown by the quick growing wild bushes around it! We quickly did a research on the web (thanks to google!) and surprised to find out that seaweed is actually the best type of fertilizer for any plants! The reason why it is not popularly known because it is troublesome and costly transporting them from the seashore to the farm which normally located in the highland. But hey, we have a seaside red dragon fruit farm remember?

We decided to start burying the seaweed under the red dragon fruit plants we have. Months flew away quickly and when the time of harvest came, we quickly harvested one of the red dragon fruit and tasted it. “Yummmmmy!” It was a surprise that we achieve a taste of red dragon fruit like no other we have tried before. It is sweet, fresh, and kind of it has a distinctive umami feeling like a kombu has been added into it! The umami feeling on our red dragon fruit becomes our inspiration to create red dragon fruit GELATO! Well it is our guests favourite dessert now in Arumdalu 🙂

So let us change the proverbs now:
” Your Trash? Think again. It might be your most precious treasure :)”

Ps: Now we are using the seaweed fertilizer into almost all our farm in Arumdalu. Exciting things await in front of us! Instead of calling it “cleaning”, now we call it “harvesting”!