So we're back from our week at the organic farm. The farm was in a village called Akweikrum, near Twifo Praso, and we were staying with an incredibly friendly man called Nana, his wife Mary Senior, his teen daughter Dora and his teen relative Mary Junior.

From Accra we travelled through Cape Coast to Twifo Praso where we met Nana. We took a taxi to his house and when we arrived it was just stunning. The family live in a very basic compound, with just bedrooms and a fenced off space for taking bucket showers, surrounding a sandy yard with two large tables for drying their cocoa beans and palm nuts. We dropped off our bags and Nana took us into his 'garden'. Behind the compound was a mass of plantain trees, banana trees, palm trees and towering coconut trees. He had one of the local boys shimmy up and knock some coconuts down. All the local kids came around for some free coconut, and Nana handed Jack and I one each. We'd never tried fresh coconut before. There's a large green pod surrounding the woody shell that you normally see on a coconut. Nana hacked through this with his machete and gave us each a chip to use as a spoon. He cracked the top off the barky inside - the coconut water was very refreshing. Once inside, the fresh coconut was an entirely new experience. The white wasn't much bigger around than a fist, but instead of being hard it was soft and juicy, the same consistency as a hard boiled egg. We scraped it out with our spoons.

The village was set right on the edge of the forest, and there was a cool river that wound its way around the back of Nana's house where we climbed down every morning to fetch water. The food was amazing. We were constantly snacking on coconuts and bananas, and the lovely fresh oranges that hung over the yard, which like all oranges in Ghana are actually green in colour. Every morning we had fresh avocado from Nana's farm. Mary Senior was an excellent cook and was teaching Dora and Mary all her skills. Here we had the best versions of fufu (pounded cassava and plantain), ampesi (boiled plantain and sauce), groundnut soup and omo tuo (rice balls) that we've had in the whole of our time in Ghana. Nana's instructions were that when you were in his house you would 'eat more, more more', with the consequence that the meals were usually twice the size needed. We'd eat and eat until we had to say 'ame pa pa' or 'I'm very, very full'.

The farm wasn't what I'd expected at all. Set right amongst the forest, we would walk for twenty minutes until we came across Nana's cocoa trees or cassava plants. With our machetes, our main job was to hack away anything that wasn't cassava or cocoa yam. There were lots of weeds, including some small trees, so it was a far more violent weeding session than I've ever encountered before. Nana was in his sixties, but he was far more energetic and capable than us in the weeding. Our other job was to pick palm nuts from their spiky bunches, to put them in a bowl ready for boiling and pounding, to make palm oil - a red oil eaten with beans or as a soup.

Nana was a great guide, and would have been a great introduction to Ghana if we had met him first on our travels. He was always telling us Twi/Fante phrases and was keen to get us to try new things. One of the nicest was when he split open a cocoa pod. The beans were all nested inside, surrounded by a white pulp, that you could suck off. It was very sweet and fruity. The cocoa pods before they dried were actually a deep purple colour inside.

The whole family were very welcoming, even when there was a language barrier, and the girls were pretty impressive in their English knowledge, constantly asking us to 'Spell me SOUP' or 'Spell me BANKU' so they could improve their spellings before they start school again in September. It was a very short week, and it was great fun.

Nana was missing half his teeth and was saving up to get his dentures repaired. He often said that fufu was his favourite meal because it was 'very hard to make, but very easy to eat'. (Some people even suggest not chewing fufu before it's swallowed.) When we left we gave Nana some cedis to fix his teeth, so that as he said, next time we see him we'll look at his full smile and say 'Oh! Nana is a young man!'