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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 25, 2019 18:01:02 GMT -6
I found one of our 8' foot pawpaw trees broken over this Winter, uprooted and laying on the bare ground. It didn't have a rootball attached, only a tapered piece below the bark line that resembled a sharpened pencil. I never figured it would survive, but I dug a hole and stuck it back in the ground anyhow. To my surprise, it leafed out again in Spring and has the best-looking pawpaws of the orchard hanging from its boughs. This pawpaw is the one I found broken over in Winter. It is of the Shenandoah variety. Apparently, they are hardy beyond belief! While out in the yard, I also noticed, persimmons, Peaches, Pears, Paper shell Pecans, Plums, Peppers, Potatoes, Peonies, and Pigs, I forgot to snap a photo of any peas, passion fruit, or poison ivy ... We've also got Elderberries galore, blueberries by the bucket, and Blackberries by the bushel. This year may turn out to be our most productive year ever! Oh, and don't forget the apples ... Thank you, God, for the abundance and variety of the harvest we are about to receive. Thank you, for our daily bread.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 6, 2019 17:52:19 GMT -6
Two months to go before the Pawpaws are ripe. It seems like just a few weeks ago that they were blooming. Someday, I'm gonna have to get an angle at the this thing where you can see all 4 of the fruits in this cluster ... They are dangling from an extremely resilient little twig of a stem. With these fruits approaching 8 ounces each, that's an incredible amount of weight to support. God builds some amazing things!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 16, 2019 23:26:00 GMT -6
My Pawpaws are loaded this year. I sure have had a lot of curious 'U-pick' customers stop me to ask, "What are those weird leafed trees with all those big, green fruits hanging from their branches?"
I usually just draw a blank stare when I reply, "They're Pawpaw Trees", as very few people from this neck of the woods have even heard of a Paw Paw tree, much less actually seen one.
That's a real shame too, because they're always such a special treat to our family each season with their smooth texture and tropical-fruit taste. The Pawpaw fruit is the heaviest fruit of all the native fruits in the entire Americas. It's a shame more people don't grow them.
There's no reason this variety shouldn't be more wide spread in this region; it adapts very well to our growing conditions.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 22, 2019 16:51:39 GMT -6
I noticed this morning, that there were twenty-two, very large pawpaw fruits on the tree that I found pulled up by its roots last winter. After finding it pulled up, that cold winter day, I quickly punched a hole in the ground with a rock bar and pushed the taproot back into the dirt, not at all expecting it to live.
What a will to survive, this thing has! This tree is loaded with large fruit after having been uprooted in mid-winter and hurriedly jammed back into the ground. Its leaves are sparse, but its spirit is strong. I've never seen a plant try so hard. This is a Shenandoah variety pawpaw. It is about 8' feet tall. This is what a normal pawpaw tree should look like this time of year, in full leaf. This is a Well's variety pawpaw. In addition to a neat appearance and the awesome fruit they bear, Pawpaw trees have beautiful, bright yellow, foliage in the autumn and spectacular tropical like leaves in summer. This is another survivor of terrible hardship. This little pawpaw tree was planted the same day as the one behind it, but it was eaten to the ground by deer, two years in a row. It had to start over from scratch twice ... This is a KSU Atwood pawpaw, but being how the deer ate it off level with the ground, two years running, it is probably only the root stock of whatever the KSU Atwood was grafted on to. (Still, these are very tough and very hardy trees). I don't know why more people don't grow them?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 30, 2019 11:11:32 GMT -6
This is a recipe for Pawpaw ice cream. This is similar to a vanilla sorbet, with a custard base, so it should be eaten within the week, because it tends to get hard when left in the freezer over time and can become rather 'icy' if left unused.
Ingredients 1-1/2 cups mashed, de-seeded, pawpaws, about 4 or 5 pawpaws 2 cups cream 2 cups milk A scant 1 cup sugar 1/2 a vanilla bean, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 5 egg yolks
Instructions: The only 'tricky' part to this recipe is tempering the egg yolks, but even that is not too difficult to be an enjoyable task.
Start by making the custard for the ice cream. Heat the cream, and milk, and sugar, in a pot over medium heat to the steaming point, about 165°F. If you are using a real vanilla bean, add it to the mixture now. If you are using vanilla extract, wait a bit.
Beat the egg yolks in a separate a bowl; while stirring the yolks constantly, add one ladle of the hot cream mixture into the egg yolks. Then, do this a second time -- this is called, 'tempering the egg yolks' so they don't curdle from shock, in the hot cream. Once warmed sufficiently, pour the tempered egg yolk mixture into the cream pot and stir.
Stir the custard constantly and heat it back to the 165-degree steaming point. When it thickens -- it should coat the back of a spoon -- at this point, turn off the heat and pour the custard into a cooling bowl. I like to set the bowl into a larger bowl filled with ice, to cool the mix down more quickly. Stir in the vanilla extract if that's what you are using.
When the custard is cool, whisk the mashed pawpaws into the custard until they are well combined. You can put the mixture into your ice cream maker now, or you can push it through a fine-meshed strainer to remove any stray bits; you'll need to fish out the vanilla bean if you used that anyway. Run this mixture through your ice cream machine and enjoy! Note that prep time does not include chilling time after you make the custard.
Also, homemade ice cream is always better if covered with a thick towel or a quilt and left in the ice bucket to cure for about 20 minutes before serving.
ENJOY!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 26, 2019 8:03:03 GMT -6
August 25th, 2019
We enjoyed our first ripe Pawpaws of the season today, after Church on a wonderful Sunday afternoon. The reason for this unexpected harvest was that heavy rains knocked three large fruits from their branches. The largest of them weighing a good 12 ounces.
These fruits are an incredibly uplifting treat, supplying enough goodies for the entire family to enjoy the experience !
You just know Autumn is right around the corner when Pawpaws start hitting the ground.
Pawpaw fruits are the largest native american fruit able to grow north of the Red River. These 4 Pawpaw fruits put together, weigh about 3 pounds and are supported by a single twig that's not even as thick as a pencil. I had to support this branch with a 'crutch' to keep them from touching the ground as the branches swayed under their massive weight. This is an amazing plant! Several of these fruits are in the 9 to 12 ounce range. This one weighed 9.3 ounces. I counted 23 Pawpaws on this single, eight foot tall tree. I can't imagine what these trees might be capable of once they reach full maturity. (This is the tree that I found this winter, ripped out by the roots). I hurriedly punched a hole in the icy ground, using a rock bar and tamped it back in as best I could. I had no expectation that it would even live another season, much less bare so much fruit. Pawpaw trees are very happy to reside in Northeastern Oklahoma. For the life of me, I don't know why they are so scarce? The size of this Pawpaw fruit dwarfed my pocket box knife. This knife is 4 1/8" x 1 5/8" closed as shown in the photo. This was a 12.1 ounce Pawpaw. The flavor was wonderful, though very hard to explain, a cross somewhere between a mango and a banana with a unique texture all its own. very much worth the trouble to nurse them through their first wo years by providing temporay artificial shade.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 30, 2019 20:02:54 GMT -6
The storm this morning knocked about 10 pounds of Pawpaws off the trees, so we're busy right now, making about a triple batch of Pawpaw Ice Cream, and some Pawpaw bread as well. (I just used my banana bread recipe and substituted Pawpaws for the bananas).
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 1, 2019 15:55:39 GMT -6
More pawpaws after Church again today! A friend of ours from Malawi got to try one for the first time and said he liked it. We're still eating pawpaw ice cream; this time, we added crushed blueberries to the mix, and a little Roselle cordial to spice it up some.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 4, 2019 18:52:32 GMT -6
These are photos of the pawpaws I've found lying on the ground in the past few days.
This pawpaw weighed 13.6 ounces. I found it lying on the ground this morning. It is pictured along side these wide mouth pint jars for a size reference. It was pretty big for a fruit found growing on an Oklahoma pawpaw tree. These were some nice sized pawpaws too, a couple of them were in the 9 to 12 ounce range. I also discovered a Buckeye tree this week. A section of the fruit is shown here beside these pawpaws. Finding a Buckeye is considered good luck. I found a whole tree!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 7, 2019 16:19:51 GMT -6
"And they all came tumbling down!"
When I went to check on the pawpaw trees yesterday, I found 18 of them that had fallen off all in the span of a few hours' time.
The four pawpaws that have been hanging from a single twig all Summer finally turned loose too.
I weighed the four of them together, out of curiosity, to see how much weight that little twig had been bearing all this time. They weighed 2.855 pounds combined ... That was a very strong little twig! Here is what they looked like where they fell. It was like finding a basket full of Prize eggs, all in the same spot, on Easter Morning! Here they are on the scale, being weighed in. 2.855 pounds!
These all fell off the tree in the same day. There were 18 of them! I laid them all on a Reasor's paper grocery bag, for a size reference above, but they so completely covered the bag, that I put a second bag beside them, just so I could fit them all in the shot together.
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Post by macmex on Sept 8, 2019 4:29:43 GMT -6
That's a beautiful sight! My wife and I were talking about paw paws, the other day (while enjoying one of the ones you gave us) and concluded that they are better than mangos. They're similar in taste, but they have not strings in the flesh.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 8, 2019 19:26:29 GMT -6
We'll sure miss 'em when they're gone ... but right now, the pawpaws are not getting eaten nearly as quickly as they were a few weeks ago. It seems like we've had a bumper crop of almost everything except apples this year. But, thanks to George and Jerreth, our pantry will be full of those this Winter too.
We've been busy, peeling, coring and putting up apples since last Sunday. We've got plenty of apple butter jelly canned up now, and lots of good, chewy, dried apple rings too.
Thanks, guys!
Life is extra good this time of year ... Things like that, just make it better!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 13, 2019 20:53:04 GMT -6
It's now, Mid-September, and I'm still getting Pawpaws! I'm eating one right now. It weighs every bit of 12 ounces. These things are incredibly prolific and taste great too. You could easily make a meal of one of these on an afternoon hike. Many a morning this month, I've subsisted off of nothing more than Pawpaws and Roselle Tea, until a little after dinner time.
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Post by macmex on Jun 25, 2022 11:18:14 GMT -6
Back in 2019 you (Ron) gave us some of your improved variety Paw Paw fruit and I commented on them, above. Well, I saved seeds from that fruit and put them in a damp paper towel, in the fridge, to stratify them for growing in the Spring. Then... I lost them in the fridge. Found them almost 3 years later... in the fridge (though they were indeed hiding}. I planted them in a pot about a month ago and have been watering them, hoping that they survived that long hibernation.
I was beginning to lose hope when, yesterday, while watering, I accidentally washed some soil off the top of the pot. Hey! Look! They're sprouting!
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Post by hmoosek on Jun 25, 2022 12:06:17 GMT -6
I have a big area of land they should do well on. It’s a forest of hackberry trees with complete shade. Lots of shade and after two years of age, I could cut a few hackberries to give sunlight.
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