The Sweet Sound of Sugarcane

The island I live on, Vanua Levu, is ~3000 square miles. Most of the interior is really mountainous, but that doesn't hinder the island's main industry: sugarcane. Sugarcane grows really well in the flatter areas here, and when you drive out into the rural areas the fields are expansive. Despite the fact that sugarcane is the island's main industry there is only one sugar mill on the entire island, the Fiji Sugar Corporation mill. It is located in Labasa, and is roughly 2 miles east of my house. Lucky for me, this means that every truck and tractor on Vanua Levu that transports cane drives right past my house. It is the height of the harvesting season right now, so the noise outside my window has escalated from a constant but somewhat ignorable din to an incessant, unavoidable one. That, however, pales in comparison to the noise from the cane train that blows its horn on the other side of my house. Fortunately, my house is all single-pane windows so I have some good soundproofing. I'm pretty used to it at this point though, and it's not all bad. I can tell what time it is at night by how much noise there is outside.

It's kind of like this.

Sugarcane is really tasty, you can just cut off the bark and chew on it. Its basically like a vascular carrot (not really) filled with delicious sugar water. Only you don't want to swallow the solid part. Once you've chewed it up and gotten the juice its pretty much just like wet, fibrous sawdust. Yeah, don't swallow it.