I’ve spoken about abundance before and how we were attempting to accommodate it. This week, having run afoul of it once again, I thought it might be beneficial to discuss it.
We had an abundance of apples, chestnuts, and paw paws.
We had a good year for apples. I don’t spray much and so they were gnarly and misshapen. Sometimes, they’re even a little mealy. This is not a problem for us because we skin them, cut them up, and dry them. They make great dried apples. The only problem with them is while they don’t need a lot of processing, they do require some. And, in this case, we were overtaken by the chestnuts.
The plan is to get the apples right after the chestnuts are done. After all, apples are fun but they’re really not a calorie crop. Chestnuts are. We make bread, soup, and other winter meals from chestnut flour.
The chestnuts hit hard this year. Chestnuts are more like grain than a true nut and they will mold if left on the ground. They also require significant processing. So, when the harvest comes in we drop everything to get it. Right now, we’re coming to the end of it but getting them in took precedence over the apples.
We have two chestnut trees, a resistant American chestnut and a Chinese chestnut. The two trees have different reproductive strategies. Both have their nuts develop in spikey burrs. The Chinese burrs open while the nut is still on the tree. When they do drop, the burrs look like odd starfish. Thus, we lose almost all of them to the squirrels and deer. The deer scat makes the area around the chestnut a minefield for a while.
The American drops some but mostly depends on the impact of the burr to burst out the nut. Not sure how this works in terms of evolution, but there it is. The American is actually better for us. Not only does it bear better, but many times the burr breakage is incomplete and it slows down the squirrel and deer and gives us a chance.
So, there’s about 1-2 weeks where I go out every day with the handle of the cart and the picker in my other (hands without gloves and pickers are defined to be “lacerated.”) and walk the area under the tree. Sometimes, the tree strikes back. I’ve learned to wear a hat.
The intensity of the fall increases as we get further into the fall. At some point, the tree gives up and sends the closing time to the burrs. Whatever is left on the tree—enclosed, open, ripe, unripe, unpollinated—gets the exit order and the burrs drop in four, five, six or more bunches. I’ve policed a strip only to look back and it looks like I was never there. It’s entertaining to her the thump, thump thump, thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump behind me.
The first step is gathering the burrs. Then, we have to deburr them. I do a lot of that since my hands are fairly strong. The resulting nuts are still in their husk. We’ve found that we can just clip the nuts at one end and put them in the nuke for 10 minutes. The steam loosens the husk and, most of the time, they don’t explode.
After that, they go into the food dehydrator for a day or so. This dries out the husk over the nut. At that point, we sit in front of the telly and crunch, husk in one bowl, nut in the other.
After that, back into the dehydrator until they are perfectly dry. At that point, we can store them for a long time. When we need flour, we have a Chinese flour grinder we use. It’s sort of a large, wicked blender. A switch at one end and a twist-lock at the other. When we run it, the lights dim and there is the smell of ozone.
Finally, the paw paws.
As I said, the apple crop is fairly benign and the chestnuts require a lot of work but the result can be stored.
The paw paws have a different problem—one I had not foreseen last year when we started getting a good crop. This year, we got as many as a hundred pounds of paw paws. Great! We thought.
Not so fast.
Turns out that paw paws have a neurotoxin: annonacin.
Annonacin is a “disabling and potentially lethal neurotoxin,” according to the Wikipedia article. But it’s safe—as long as you only consume it as fresh fruit. The pulp has a low concentration and the nature of the pulp also sequesters the compound. Make wine from it? Releases and concentrates the annonacin. Cook it? Releases and concentrates the annonacin. Dehydrate it? Releases and concentrates the annonacin.
I have no need of premature Parkinson’s disease. I like my brain very much, thank you.
Now, I like paw paws as a fruit very much but there’s no way I can consume a hundred pounds of the stuff. Twenty? Maybe.
We ended up composting a lot of it and that just seems wrong.
So, next year is likely to be just as productive—or more so—than this year. What to do?
We’ve come up with a few ideas. One idea is we sell the fresh fruit. We have been looking at a venue but the paw paw fruit has a lot of issues. It’s fragile. It bruises easily—there are farmer’s markets that we might be able to sell at. But can we get together enough to make it worthwhile? Can we sell through another venue—one that can handle just a few fruit—say, twenty—at a time?
Another worry for next year.
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