Late Fall Fruit: Persimmons!

The fruit crops were abundant this year due to lack of a hard late freeze as well as due to a killing late freeze last year that killed off the apple, pear and cherry crops altogether and reduced the grape harvest by at least half. The trees and vines think they’re dying after such a bad year, so will produce like crazy the next year. Yet oddly enough, there are no acorns or hickory nuts or wild walnuts on the homestead this year. Either they’re all getting eaten as fast as they fall by deer, or there just aren’t any. So again this year I’ll have to gather my acorns a bit south at my sister’s place on the lake.

Cherries are the first to ripen in early June. My family eagerly looks forward to them and I’ve never had to try and preserve - they get eaten just as fast as I can gather. Then comes the apples in August. This year the golden delicious were fat and happy, enough to turn into pie and apple butter in addition to being eaten regularly fresh off the tree. The pears fall in September and there were plenty this year to process. These are hard cinnamon pears, not great to eat straight because they’re so tough even after sitting for a few days, so I make pear butter that needs very little sugar and is great on toast or mixed into hot oatmeal or cream of wheat.

The grape harvest starts with concords in early September and then muscodines later in the month. With those, I thought the fruit harvest was done for the year when I happened to discover now in mid-October a lone American persimmon tree [Diospyros virginiana] in the back corner of the yard behind the shed that is absolutely loaded. We’ve lived here 16 years and I never saw fruit on this 40-foot tall tree, so I guess it must have reacted to last year’s late freeze just like the other fruit trees did. Hmmm… what to do with persimmons?

These persimmons are a pretty golden with patches of red, about an inch or two across. To eat fresh you should wait until they fall and are quite soft and pulpy, picked they are just a bit unripe and tart. I quartered and seeded some of those and packed them into a jar with vodka. These will make tasty tidbits during the holidays. The rest, which I’m gathering on a sheet tied around the trunk and staked up off the ground to catch the falling ripe fruit, I will dry for use in my holiday fruitcakes and fruitcake cookies.

Dried persimmons are a little softer and sweeter than dried dates, but with similar consistency. Traditionally persimmons in Asia (some big enough to weigh a pound) are halved and dried for three weeks in the sun, then finished off in low ovens. I will use the low oven method exclusively, to avoid the “no-seeum” issue (tiny gnats that manage to come right through screens and mesh). I haven’t had any real experience with persimmons - this is the first time I’ve had them readily available - so I’ll let my readers know if they turn out well enough to use in baking. They sure taste good, so the trick will probably be to keep the family from eating too many at one sitting.

That can be an issue, I’ve learned from my researches on the internet, because of their tendency to induce diarrhea if you aren’t careful. The good news is that persimmons are high in vitamin c, packed with riboflavin (vitamin B2), and contain tannins as well as anti-tumor compounds and phytonutrients. They can be as good of antioxidants as dark grapes, and in traditional Chinese medicine the fruit is used to regulate the ch’i - the vital power. Below are some links to information about persimmons for those interested or who find that they too host a tree or few on their property.

Wikipedia: Persimmon
Persimmon - Diospyros, Ebenaceae
Persimmon General Crop Information

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