Homemade wine. Made from our own grown, fresh, organic fruit. No sulfites. We have made a lot of loquat wine, so recently thought we would try blueberries.
It takes about 3 weeks for the sugar to get gobbled up by the yeast. We were shooting for a very dry but full-bodied wine. Cabernet. So far so good. It’s 3 weeks old, and we’ll let it age another 6 weeks…maybe.
Jeremiah was a bullfrog,
was a good friend of mine.
I never understood a single word he said,
but I helped him drink his wine.
(And he always had some mighty fine wine.)
Lyrics from “Joy to the World” by Hoyt Axton; performed by Three Dog Night”; released February 1971
When you’re living on a small-scale homestead and raising pastured livestock for food, and when you’re getting along in years and have less energy than you used to (only a little less energy, mind…), but when that’s the situation, you may find it difficult to keep up with pasture rotation for the animals.
Awhile back we did a piece on “pasture-making”. That was for larger fields that weren’t seeded as yet. But at the same time we were seeding and scratching the larger plots, the grass in the orchards was going to waste…well, except for the geese, but they are very slow grazers. Can’t really count on the geese to keep your pasture mowed.
Take advantage of the grass in the orchard…but protect the trees from foraging goats!
Long story short…we have added another pasture by fencing in each of the fruit trees individually in the front orchard. Now we can easily move the electric fence around each day to section off pasture plots for the goats, without worrying about the fruit trees. As long as you get the animals off the plot before they rip the grass roots out (that’s 1-2 days at the most) the grass will re-grow at the first rain.
As my Great-Aunt Mattie used to say…”You live and learn.” Isn’t that the truth.
Well, the obvious answer when you are new to paw paw growing is to ask someone who has grown them before! Enter the Pinterest search. There is a lot of information out there about the paw paw. It was both abundant and popular back in the day, with Native Americans, colonists, and European explorers.
Pickin’ up paw paws,
Put ’em in your pocket
Pickin’ up paw paws
Put ’em in your pocket
Pickin’ up paw paws, Put ’em in your pocket
Way down yonder in the paw paw patch.
Actually a tropical fruit, it has self-adapted to the more temperate climates of some of the Northern states. It grows wild in 26 states.
We’re excited, because we have at least a dozen wild paw paw trees and they are all full of fruit. They will make a wonderful addition to our fruit smoothie. Apparently you have to be there when the fruit gets ripe, ’cause if it falls off you’ll lose it. This could get tricky.
Turns out that paw paws start off with hard shells like they are now. When they are ripe, the skin softens a bit, like a pear. We’re keeping a close eye. Wish us luck.
So the answer to the original burning question, “How do you know when a paw paw is ripe?” is that someone else can give you hints (“the skin softens, like a pear”), but you’ll never know if the paw paw is ripe until you experience it yourself. Lived experience, the only real way to learn.
