Fall is the Time for Persimmons

The other day we were having coffee in the late afternoon when a visitor drove up.  It was a gentleman from our church.  He is an interesting fellow.  He was a boat captain for years and years piloting boats up and down the river from his base in West Memphis, Arkansas.  On this fine day he came walking up to our door with a plastic bag.  He said, "I have a little something for you."  He had been to his brother's house.

His brother had a persimmon tree that was loaded.  He said, "You'd better get 'em before the crows and coons get 'em all."  So he filled a plastic shopping bag with persimmons and wanted to split them with us.  You'll remember our postings about the wild persimmons that grow in our yard.  We've processed and froze a bunch of them.  These persimmons are three times the size and twice as sweet!

We put them in a cardboard box to further ripen and as they got soft, Tricia froze them whole.

As opposed to the wild persimmons that have around nine seeds per fruit, these have none!  We ran them through the food mill to liquify the persimmons for freezing in zip loc bags.

The persimmon flesh is fluorescent orange in color.  It almost looks like egg yolks!

But the sweetness!  Let me tell you about the sweetness.  We're already planning to make a persimmon cake using these persimmons.  We also talked about making persimmon ice cream.  Finally, we talked about making persimmon popsicles.  In this area persimmons are a ubiquitous fall fruit.  We've very thankful a generous gentleman dropped some off at our house.  Tricia's gonna make him a cake!

Processing Wild Persimmons

Other than pumpkin-spice flavored everything, the one thing that lets me know that fall is just around the corner is the ripening of the wild persimmons on our tree.  When we first bought the property twenty four years ago, there were two wild persimmon trees, but one succumbed.  The remaining tree produces hundreds of little golf ball-sized persimmons at this time every year.  They turn orange and fall to the ground and we go out and pick them up.

They are sticky, sweet and the birds love them.  My neighbor told me that prior to us moving here the raccoons loved them, too!  They would climb up in the tree and eat until they were full.  We haven't seen raccoons in a long time.  Each day we go out to the base of the tree and pick up the persimmons that have fallen.  

We take them in and wash them up.  They are very soft.  Some of them have broken as they hit the ground.  To be honest with you, most people would just let the birds eat them.  I'll show you why in a minute.  Each persimmon has a large number of big seeds in them.

We have a food mill that we sit on top of an 8 cup Pyrex measuring bowl.  We feed the persimmons into the food mill and crank.  The persimmon flesh is pushed through the holes in the mill and the seeds stay on top.

We spoon out the seeds and put them in a bowl.  They'll be fed to the animals or go in the compost pile.  Can you see what I mean about the seeds?  You get more seeds from each persimmon than you do edible fruit.

But that's okay.  The fruit we get is delicious!

We have a recipe for a persimmon Bundt cake that we have enjoyed for years.  We even have altered it to make a chocolate persimmon cake.  When it comes out of the oven, the fragrance fills the kitchen and it is so good to eat it while it is still warm.  Each recipe calls for a cup and a half of persimmon.

So we package the processed persimmons in pint-sized freezer bags with 1 and 1/2 cups of persimmon in each bag and then freeze them in stacks.  That way we can look at the stack in the freezer and inventory and know how many cakes we'll be eating!

So far we have 8 cakes in the freezer with plenty more persimmons left to fall.  It looks like it will be a good year.  That's a good thing because with the drought last year, we didn't pick any, so we need to build our inventory back up.

A Sign of Fall

Living in the south as we do, it can be officially Fall but still feel very much like summer.  It is still swelteringly hot and humid, the grass is still growing, mosquitoes still biting and the leaves haven't started falling.  One harbinger of Fall is the ripening (and falling) of the persimmons from our wild persimmon tree in the yard.  The fruit falls from about twenty feet up in the tree to the ground and the soft St. Augustine grass catches it, protecting it (most times) from bursting. 

You can see how tall the tree is, although it is hard to zoom in and see the persimmons up there.

Here is one I zoomed in on.  Their bright orange color is easy to spot and you can gauge how many more will fall.  We go out with a colander every day and pick up what's fallen.  We gather a bunch.  We used to have twice as many as we had two trees, but one of them died.

Unlike normal persimmons, these wild ones are slightly smaller than a golf ball.  Each persimmon has a 'cap' that we pop off and leave on the ground.  We also pinch off a black tip at the bottom of each fruit.  We bring the day's harvest in and wash them up in the sink.

We process them prior to putting them away.  In order to process them, we run them through a full mill.  

By hand cranking the mill, the fruit is broken up and the processed fruit is squeezed through a screen at the bottom.  This leaves only the skin and the large seeds, in the mill while the processed fruit falls into a measuring bowl below.

You can see the screen at the bottom of the food mill and also get a good idea of what the processed fruit looks like.  It is very, very sweet!

We measure the processed persimmons in a big measuring cup.

The reason we meticulously measure the processed fruit is because we make delicious persimmon cakes with them.  The recipe for a persimmon cake calls for 1 1/2 cups of persimmon.  We pour exactly 1 1/2 cups of persimmon into each zip loc bag, using a canning funnel to avoid making such a big mess in the process.

We seal each bag up, label it and stack in the freezer neatly.

We can open the freezer, take inventory of how many bags we have stored up.  Each bag = 1 cake.  It may be my sweet tooth talking, but I see 14 cakes in the freezer.  Nothing like a hot persimmon cake coming out of the oven on a cool, fall day!

A Sure Sign of Fall

It is early September and it is still just as hot and humid as it was in June and July, but there are some things going on that clues us in that Fall is just around the corner.  Everything in nature is a cycle - a repeated series of events that you can almost set your watch by, if you are paying attention, that is.  At this time each and every year, our wild persimmon tree loads up with fruit that is green at first and then quickly turns orange. 

Persimmon tree loaded with fruit

They fall to the ground and land in the soft grass.  We pick them up before the birds get to them.  Their "shelf life" isn't long, so each day we pick them up, pull off the caps and bring the fruit inside and wash them up.

The picture above may make you believe that the persimmons are large, but the photo below gives you some scale.  The fruit is very small.  They are also FILLED with seeds.  To be honest, it is almost too much trouble to deal with to pick them, clean them and process the fruit into an edible commodity.

But we do it.  The fruit is very sweet and we really enjoy making persimmon cakes.  Well, we enjoy EATING persimmon cakes.  I'll show you how we process these little persimmons.  Here is a big bowl of fruit we collected today.  The fruit is heavy, soft and warmed by the sun.  Some have burst open - their sticky contents oozing out.  Russ likes to eat them straight out of the bowl.

In the past we processed by hand, separating the pulp from the skins and seeds by pressing through a colander with a spoon.  We've since purchased a food mill for $19.99.  It has made things a lot easier.  I think it's already paid for itself.  We set it atop a big measuring container in the sink and drop cleaned fruit (between 12-18) and turn the handle.  The mill presses the fruit down through a screen.  The screen serves to keep the seeds and skins separated from the fruit pulp.

Most of the processed persimmon falls into the container below, but when we're done, we are sure to get all of the fruit off the food mill.  The processed persimmon is similar in consistency to baby food, I would say.

Although Tricia has made persimmon cookies, the main thing she does is make cakes with them.  She makes a regular persimmon cake and a chocolate persimmon cake.  The recipe calls for a cup and a half of persimmon, so we measure out 1 1/2 cups .

Today, once we were done processing, we had 12 cups of persimmon puree.  It took about 30 minutes to do the job.

We were able to make up 8 ziploc bags of persimmon.

We'll freeze them and pull out once ready to make a cake.  A fresh baked persimmon cake makes an aroma in your house that draws everyone to the kitchen.  A hot slice of persimmon cake is so heavy and moist.  It reminds me of fall.  Now if only the cool weather would get here!

Yet Another Use for Persimmons

It is a sure sign that fall is around the corner when the little wild persimmons start falling from the tree in the yard.  Although it is very hard to see in the photo below, there are numerous persimmons still clinging to the branches of the tree.  Many, however, have fallen to the ground.  The overripe ones burst on impact, but most survive the fall intact.

They wait there on the ground for us to come along and pick them up.  Those that we don't get in time are feasted on by birds.  We posted about the persimmons before in THIS POST FROM 2015.  Then we also showed you how we process the persimmons we gather in THIS POST and within that post is the link to yet another previous blog post that contains the recipe for delicious persimmon cake.

We've gathered and processed enough persimmons already this year to meet our family's needs for many persimmon cakes.  The inventory of processed frozen persimmon in the freezer is at capacity.

And yet the orange-golden sickly sweet little fruit keeps falling from the sky. I am not a wasteful guy and I always feel that there are other outlets to use nature's bounty.  I walked out to the persimmon tree and surveyed all the fruit that lay beneath the tree.  Then I thought to myself, "I know who can use this excess fruit!"

I went to the backyard and picked up a molasses bucket and picked up every persimmon I could see.  My fingers were sticky when I was done as I picked up even the ones that had burst.

Then I carried the bucket over to the side of the garden at the entrance to the barnyard and called the chickens, "Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!"  They came running with wings flapping.  Although they have very small brains, they have figured out that when I call them like that, it's time to eat!

I turned the bucket over and banged my hand on the bottom to dislodge those persimmons that were clinging stickily to the bottom.  Then it was feast time.  The chickens encircled the pile of wild persimmons and gourged themselves on the fruit.

The chickens quickly transformed the messy pile of fruit int a pile of big seeds. That was the only thing left.  These 'food processors' did the dirty work and seemed to enjoy their meal.  I laughed as I watched the chickens grooming themselves when they were done, wiping off their sticky beaks on the grass.  They truly transformed the waste with haste.