Persimmons and a Pumpkin

The other day while out on a walk, Kali and I found a pumpkin in the ditch by the side of the road. It was unblemished and I loaded it into the jogger and brought it home. It wasn't large but I was still proud of the roasted pumpkins seeds and batch of pumpkin bread that made the house smell good a few days later.

Then yesterday Kali and I were on a walk and right across the road from the spot we had found our first "treasure' was another much bigger pumpkin in the cow pasture. Since Kali was in the jogger and there is no shoulder there to speak of and because there were lots of cows nearby, I passed up the opportunity to get another free pumpkin.

Today Kali, Jason and I ventured out for a "trash walk" (loaded up with empty bags for trash and recycling - and Kali is so into it that she walks almost 3 miles without thinking about the fact that she is walking 3 miles...). With Jason along I thought we might be more adventurous - okay, I was hoping he would go get the pumpkin for me. The cows were a bit farther away and he bravely entered the pasture to rescue the thrown away pumpkin and help it to be used for a greater cause. Imagine my sheepishness when Jason tossed the pumpkin into the air like it weighed nothing. It was FAKE!!! We had a good laugh, still brought it home and it is now in the bag to go to Gift and Thrift. Someone might enjoy a fake pumpkin...

When we arrived home we had some daylight left and it was too beautiful to go inside. So we got our very dirty sheets off the line for another round of gathering persimmons. It is a dangerous endeavor: I hold some wood against the tree so Jason is not banging directly on the bark of the persimmon tree. He bangs against it and it rains persimmons. While a percentage falls on our sheets, a good number fall around us and ON us. By the end, my shirt and hair have splashes of orange, as does Jason's beard and hat. They actually sting when they hit, but I've determined it to be well worth the temporary discomfort!

[Jason's note: Our favored method (so far) of processing the sweet, juicy, and very smooshy persimmons into a usable form is to strain them with a Foley Food Mill (a thrift store find!). These were well known, we understand, to the homemakers of yesteryear, but have fallen into disuse in recent decades. If there is an easier, more automatic way to sort the gooey puree from large, hard persimmon seeds, we are not aware of it.]

So we now have five containers of persimmon pulp in the freezer and there are plenty more on the tree. There was a little squirrel up high in one of the trees nearby who had to go past us to get down out of the tree. Between banging episodes, the little guy tore down the tree and ran as far away from us as possible; hopefully not too traumatized.