Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time for the next major holiday, Christmas! I’ve always bought live Christmas trees from a store every year. I had never been to a Christmas tree farm where you cut and buy a tree that grows in the mountains. So this year, I drove to the mountains to buy a Christmas tree.
Isn’t it exciting to pick a tree that grows in the ground, cut it, and bring it home yourself 😍 It’s relatively close to my house, and the price is almost the same as buying one at the store.
So, we went. The farm we went to was by appointment only, so we were the only family there when we got there. Yeah!
They gave me a saw and said, “Cut a tree down, leaving the trunk a foot off the ground so it will grow back next year. Feel free to walk around. By the way, if you pick a tree from the bottom of the valley, you don’t have to go to the gym for a week.” (laughs). Pulling a tree from the bottom of the valley would be quite a workout. I love this kind of American humor💖
If I hadn’t been told, I would have unintentionally gone to the bottom of the valley to explore. In fact, the valley was so steep that I felt like I would fall down.
We walked down the slope, measured the height with a tape measure, found a tree we liked, and cut it with a saw. It would have been much easier with an electric saw, but we were in the mountains with no power outlet. It took a lot of strength.
After loading the tree on the roof of the car, I asked the owner about the ripe persimmons hanging from a tree, which I had been curious about. The owner lent me an apple picker, saying, “Yesterday, there was a person who was so happy that he wanted to make persimmon bread that he went home. Feel free.” She lent me a handy thing called an apple picker, which made it easy for me to pick them.
I had been curious about this for a while.
I have often seen persimmon trees in someone’s garden with many ripe fruits. Does anyone pick them?
They are called “Hachiya persimmons,” and they are astringent persimmons. Its shape is longer than the Fuyu persimmon. I actually have a sad memory of excitely picking a bag full of persimmons from the tree at an acquaintance’s house, but to only find out they were too astringent to eat when I brought them home.
There are two main types of persimmons in the U.S.
Fuyu persimmons (sweet persimmons) sold in stores
Hachiya persimmons (astringent persimmons), which are often left on trees in gardens
I thought that Americans who do not have the custom of making dried persimmons actually left them in trouble because the only way to eat astringent persimmons is to make them into dried persimmons.
What does it mean to make persimmon bread with astringent persimmons? Isn’t it bitter if you put it in as it is? I looked it up. Then I found out. Astringent persimmons turn into sweet persimmons when they are fully ripe! Wow….
I didn’t know that!
But when they are fully ripe, they are pretty soft and mushy. You can’t just cut them into pieces and eat them. You can make sorbet with them, but I don’t feel like eating sorbet in the cold winter. Since we got several, I decided to make half of them into persimmon bread and a half into dried persimmons.
You can’t get stems together with an apple picker, so if you want to make dried persimmons from persimmons without stems, you should pierce them, so this is what I did.
If I leave them outside, squirrels and birds will probably eat them, so I will keep them inside the house for a while.
Dried persimmons are truly a gluten-free, healthy snack!