Peachapalooza 2011

I have managed to miss nearly every pick-your-own fruit opportunity this season. The strawberries passed me by before I even knew what hit me. The blueberries and raspberries too. So when I learned that there is a low spray peach orchard not far from here, I was determined to go, and to make up for the lack of fruit in my freezer and pantry.

So a few weeks ago we went with a friend up to Quonquont Farms. We went early. The orchard was misty. The trees were dripping with fruit. Heaven.

Before we knew it, we had picked over a bushel of peaches. We could barely carry them back from the orchard to the car. We headed back to the house for a processing party.

In the end, we yielded something like 12 pints and 8 quarts of canned sliced peaches, 2.5 quarts of peach nectar, and two gallon freezer bags of frozen peaches. Our friend, who lives in a prospector's tent without electricity, is over the moon to be able to bring so much shelf-stable fruit home with her.

Dogwood Fruit

I've blogged about Blanche Derby's foraging videos before. Now that it's fall, I've returned to her video collection on youtube to see what else we can forage this time of year.

Right now, the Kousa Dogwood fruit is ripe. I had never known that dogwoods produced fruit, let alone edible fruit. These trees are all over town as ornamentals, and now I can't go for a walk without noticing all the ripe, edible fruit hanging from the branches. You can see the video about it here:



I've tried the fruit off of two different trees so far, and I'm on the fence about it. It's not unpleasant, but it doesn't make me go "wow", either, and it has a grainy texture that I find unappealing. Have any of you harvested dogwood fruit? What do you do with it? Do you like the taste?