Pawpaw Harvest Tracking Charts

Yesterday morning after my run, I followed my compulsion and went to inspect the pawpaw trees. On the KSU-Atwood, I found a pawpaw whose stem was breaking, reflecting of course that it was ripe and poised to fall. I broke it off and brought it inside, where W saw it before he went to school (and apparently coveted it, though I didn't know). After the kids went to school, NJ and I cut open this second pawpaw of the year and each ate half. It was a good pawpaw.

Then last night at dinner, W asked, "Where's the pawpaw?", and I realized he had seen it and wanted it. I said we had eaten it, and he looked crestfallen, so I told him there were a few other pawpaws on the tree, right next to the one I broke off, that should be ready. He and I went out and picked those, and he ate one.

Having egg on your face means to look foolish or embarrassed, but there's no foolishness or embarrassment in having pawpaw on your face! 

I wanted to get a picture of the two other pawpaws we picked, which we're saving for maybe a day until they're fully ripe. As I took the picture, W reached over and put his hand in the photo, "For perspective," he said, alluding to how we usually photograph the fish we catch (with them running down the length of our arms so people can get perspective on how big, or small, they are).

Then S, who is often not as interested in pawpaws as W, wanted in on offering perspective to the pawpaws and their viewers. She's got dibs on the smaller pawpaw, and NJ and I are planning on splitting the larger pawpaw. Hopefully tonight at dinner.

The pawpaw harvest this year has totaled five so far, which is one more pawpaw than we harvested last year. But this year, there are around 70 on the trees. Last night it seemed notable that all of the pawpaws for this year (so far) have come from the KSU-Atwood, and I started wondering about how the different cultivars would pace themselves in ripening their fruit. How to keep track?

"Johnny Pawpawseed" is a common enough nickname for people to take upon themselves or bestow on others, especially if they've done something to further the fruit's propagation. (Take a look at this google search for "Johnny Pawpawseed" and you'll see I'm not lying.) No offense to Johnny Appleseed, but I decided to go Benjamin-Franklinian in relation to the pawpaws, keeping a chart on their ripening inspired by Ben Franklin's chart aspiring to "moral perfection," as reproduced here:

Ben Franklin's 18th-century chart, from his Autobiography

My chart--or my stapled packet of charts--isn't so grid-like, and it doesn't come close to addressing such topics as venery and sincerity. Rather,...

...it has a first page that's a pawpaw-oriented map of our yard. I needed to make a map, with each tree's cultivar labeled, since I imagine I won't be the only one picking up pawpaws this September. And I need my "co-workers in the kingdom of [horti]culture" to know from which tree they're harvesting. (Check out the origin of the "co-workers" quotation here.) Once NJ and the kids have a map of which tree is which,... 

...they can write the dates on which they harvest pawpaws from any of the three trees that are bearing this year. So, five pawpaw for the Atwood to this point, marking it as the most early-ripening variety of the three trees that are bearing this year. 

And then a blank page of possibilities for the Shenandoah.

And a less optimistic blank page of possibilities for the Wells.

After W finished his pawpaw, he got out the seed storage container and asked how I was planning on keeping track of which seeds came from which tree this year, since there would be so many seeds. I told him that type of keeping track is done for now--there will be too many seeds. For this year, at least, I'll be keeping track of something else.

And here's a pic that's kind of a nonsequiter for this blog post: the two pawpaws that were earlier pictured, with a few prickly pears. Both kinds of fruit happened to be passing across our table last night, and I thought I'd take a picture to show they had at one time met, even if they parted ways shortly thereafter. It turns out the song "The Bare Necessities" in the Jungle Book isn't the only evidence of their association.