Mandarins & Persimmons

Chris and her son Toshio check which persimmons
are ready for massaging.

We have owari satsuma mandarins now at the Fruit stand. Owari satsuma mandarins are sweet, juicy and usually seedless with a thin, easy to peel skin. The crop was ready later than usual, like most of the other types of fruit have been this year. 

We're still taking orders for hoshigaki through mail order and for pick up at the fruit stand.  If you'd like to pick up more than a pound of hoshigaki at the fruit stand, please call us ahead of time.  

We stopped peeling new persimmons late last week because most of the hachiya had gotten too soft to peel.  Since we're not able to peel and start any new persimmons for the hoshigaki drying process, the persimmons left drying now make up the end of this year's hoshigaki supply.  In the colder weather, the persimmons take longer to dry, so we expect to be drying these last persimmons at least into the middle of January.  Next year sometime in October we'll begin the process again. 

Around the fruit stand we've been very busy taking care of numerous customers and massaging and packaging hoshigaki.  Out in the orchard most of the fruit besides the citrus has been picked and winter pruning and irrigation repair work has started.  If you come and take a walk through the  orchard you'll see flocks of geese and other birds visiting the trees trying to find un-picked persimmons.  Wind and cold weather has made most of the leaves drop, so you can see through the bare trees down to the strawberry field. 

Here's what's at the fruit stand now:

• Mandarins--owari satsuma
  
• Persimmons--Fuyu, Maru & Nagamaru (chocolate), Vodka-treated Hyakume, Hachiya, Gyombo, Hoshigaki (Japanese hand-dried persimmon)
• Apples--Pippen, Granny Smith
• Pomegranate--white variety
• Winter Squash--butternut, kabocha, red kuri, buttercup, spaghetti squash, pie pumpkin 
• Local Honey--from bees at our orchard & star thistle honey from Lincoln
• Perfectly Persimmon Cookbook--1004 persimmon recipes by Jean Brine
• Placer County Real Food Cookbook--by Joanne Neft and Laura Kenny
• 2012 Master Gardeners Calender
• Eggs