Autumn Harvest

From roughly late August through October some of our trees produce copious quantities of fruit and nuts.  We were lucky this year to have found some ripe pawpaw fruit in a few locations around the property.  The American pawpaw is a native tree that bears a fruit which, to me, has a taste somewhere between banana and mango.  For it to be fully enjoyed it must be eaten after it has fallen off the tree naturally.  Whenever we picked them from the tree they tended to be a bit hard and not as succulent.  The turnoff for some might be the rather ugly appearance they have after becoming ripe.  They are mottled grayish-black.  But don't be deterred by their looks as they are a delicious fruit that is rich in nutrients.   There are hundreds of these slender trees growing naturally along the creek banks, floodplain and slopes of our land.

Coming a little later are the hickory nuts.  We have several mature hickory trees probably about 30-50 years old that produce vast numbers of nuts.  Elizabeth collected probably close to 30 lbs.  While they contain quite tasty meat they are a lot of work to crack.  We tried using a hammer and a vise and both ways work but the best device is one we recently purchased exclusively for breaking them open.  It works great.

Besides the bountiful forest harvest this year we also managed to get some fruit and vegetables from the hugelkultur beds we started in the spring next to the barn.  We planted a bit late so the watermelon crop yield was low.  One of our main goals was to see how well the swaled beds would be able to capture and retain moisture on the slope as we had made them on contour, filled them with trees, wood chips and soil.  We had about normal amounts of rain and the temps were in the upper 90's frequently in July and August and yet in spite of our only being there about every 7-8 days very little additional water was needed to keep them going.

Future Fruit and Nut Tree Plans

Recently Elizabeth and I decided to get a head start on planting a few nut and fruit trees before actually moving onto the land.  I did a little searching and found a family run nursery located in Texas that got favorable reviews for its stock.  Womack's offering included pecan varieties that should be fairly cold hardy for North Carolina climate. At least that was the advice given to me by Larry Womack when I contacted them about their products.  So Caddo, Kanza and Lakota pecans, Fuji and Gala apples and some raspberry bushes are all going to be planted in late February 2015.  While visiting Into The Woods, a blog I frequently read, I learned that there is a local fruit tree nursery near Reidsville, NC that could serve some of our future needs for apple trees cultivated in this area.