A Few Sept and Oct Pawpaw Events

I've been so busy with work and running and fishing in Sept and Oct 2018 that I didn't have time to post as much as I wanted to, during the window between the first pawpaw harvested and the last. But below are a few events, kind of offering some texture to the times.

This year we were very conscientious about writing the name of the cultivar on each pawpaw fruit. It was kind of fun since sometimes the ballpoint pen seemed to bruise the skin more than write on it, such that the bruises were formed in the shape of the names of the cultivars.

Three fallen pawpaws.

One morning I went out and found a pawpaw half eaten on the ground, maybe by a deer or a raccoon? We haven't had any problems with mammals eating any of the other pawpaws. (Usually the mammals leave it to the rolly pollies and slugs.) After the deer or raccoon got to this one, some big black ants basically took up residence on the flesh for a week. They just sat there and didn't move much and gorged themselves. 

At a certain point before the harvest was over we drove up to Jackson, Wyoming, and fished. We brought five pawpaws with us, and some of us wondered if these were the first pawpaws to ever enter the town of Jackson. Or maybe even the first pawpaws to ever enter the state of Wyoming. Then again, maybe there have been many many pawpaws in Wyoming and I just haven't known about it (and I'm not planning on googling it right now to find out).

Fourth Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival

On Saturday, 22 September 2018, we held the 4th Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival. Last year we only had 12 pawpaws to divide among the crowds that thronged our house for the festival. But this year we had many more. (Whoever can count the number of the pawpaws on the counter, so be it.) We had enough that at the end of the evening, since I was cutting them in half and in fourths to make sure we had enough to go around, we had pawpaws to send guests home with.

This year we roped three friends into making some desserts with some frozen pawpaw pulp we had put in the freezer in 2017. So in addition to our traditional pawpaw cake, some friends brought pawpaw pudding, pawpaw cheesecake (with pawpaw topping), and then a layered and glazed pawpaw cake. I had some of each of the pawpaw desserts, and by the time I finished them I swore I would never eat anymore food in my life--and I kept to that swearing until lunch the next day. And there was a lot of other food at the 4th Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival--including some jackfruit.

About 50 people came to the 4th Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival; you can't see them all in this pic.

Some people talked inside.

Some people talked outside.

In this picture, to the far left, you can see the table where we set out our pawpaw linocuts, hand pulled over the course of a year, in preparation to give away at the 4th Annual Utah Pawpaw Festival. Here are some links to the prints we gave away: here and here and here. And here and here.

Pawpaw Harvest 2018: The Final Tally

Some of you, gentle readers, are real numbers people. You don't care about anything except the final tally each year, the number of fruits we got from each tree. This post is for you, contextualizing the numbers of the 2018 harvest with the numbers of the 2016 and 2017 harvest.

The Shenandoah

• 2016 final tally: 33
• 2017 final tally: 72 
• 2018 final tally: 54

The Atwood

• 2016 final tally: 34
• 2017 final tally: 32 
• 2018 final tally: 49

The Wells

• 2016 final tally: 13
• 2017 final tally: 66 
• 2018 final tally: 58

The Total

• 2016 final tally: 80
• 2017 final tally: 170 
• 2018 final tally: 165

So it was a record year for the Atwood, though the Wells and the Shenandoah underperformed compared to last year. And that threw the narrative of constant progress to pieces, since the total harvest this year was five pawpaws fewer than the total harvest last year. Still, we picked (up from the ground) plenty of pawpaws between August 17th and October 24th. Plenty of pawpaws. And next year I wouldn't be completely surprised if our Susquehanna cultivar bore a few fruits, and then the year after that, onward to the Mango cultivar. (Here I go, in the face of the deflation of harvesting fewer pawpaws this year than last year, still talking the language of "onward" this and "upward" that.)