Fall Harvest, Wild and Cultivated
October brought a quick turn of edible color at Cactus Island. It’s not just what we planted that has reached harvest, but also the wild goods growing in the vast natural areas we’ve maintained. There is a healthy population of American persimmon (fruit and spring bloom in photos) and sandhill pawpaw (if the wildlife would ever leave us one) on the land, plus the winged sumac that grows all over the place as an understory shrub makes a great lemony-flavored seasoning for chicken as well as a light citric tea. Ancient Romans used their variety of sumac for seasoning so we gave it a try; excellent and worth the effort. We harvest it, oven-dry and pulverize the outer layer off of the seed pit to use as dried spice. Steeping for drink is a much easier use of the seed cluster. We’re still waiting for the persimmon to shrivel on the branch before it can be eaten without the unpleasant caustic aftertaste, and I have yet to see a pawpaw on the branch here.
The two food hibiscus that we have grown for some years are roselle (jam) and false roselle (reddish salad leaves). Here you can see the bright red flower calyx and pink flower. The calyx is what is harvested and processed.
Those big cactus cuttings from Estero gave us our first flavorful cactus apples and also seeds for planting after picking and processing yesterday. It was a crisp, watermelon-y flavor with soft crunchy seeds that really are like Pop Rocks, as I’ve read before. We’ll enjoy one more each later this week with breakfast.
The sweet potatoes grew vast over two whole bed islands but yielded few tubers so far as they tend to produce an excess of vines and less fruit when growing in compost. Next year we’ll plant saved cuttings in enriched sand and aggressively trim to a 40 inch radius to stimulate tuber production.
At the end of Summer I had barely kept ahead of squash-boring insects and snatched most of our butternut squash from the jaws of defeat. Working in tandem, we halved, seeded and baked them on trays in a maple syrup glaze, then scooped, mashed and freezer-bagged the delicious results.
jvfreeman
James V. Freeman is an established visual artist (oil painting) with a deep interest in natural history, plants and farming. He has had numerous solo shows, a solo museum show, an upcoming museum show and his work has been featured in many publications to date. He currently has a studio in Williston, Fl at the family farm and homestead, "Cactus Island", and as a farmer, specializes in growing columnar cacti of the Caribbean and Gulf countries as well as the aquatic Madegascar Lace Plant. James and his mom Sharon manage and develop the permaculture homestead.
