{"id":4186,"date":"2014-11-04T00:35:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T00:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/?p=4114"},"modified":"2014-11-04T00:35:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T00:35:46","slug":"farm-focus-giving-thanks-for-persimmons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/farm-focus-giving-thanks-for-persimmons\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm Focus: Giving Thanks for Persimmons"},"content":{"rendered":"\"persimmon-tree-1\"<\/a>\nAs I\u2019m sure your tastebuds noticed, last week we welcomed the Fuyu Persimmon to our CSA shares. The persimmon is a very special fruit; a burst\u00a0of candy sweetness in a season of deliciously subtle flavors. In honor of our\u00a0newest addition let us share with you a brief history of this luscious fruit.\n\nThe persimmon hails from China. For centuries, the Chinese have cultivated over 2000 varieties of persimmon. Today, they continue to dominate\u00a0global production with more than 3 million metric tonnes harvested annually.\n\nHowever, there are also varieties native to North America. They were commonly consumed by Native Americans. Different tribes use the fruit for a\u00a0multitude of purposes, including gruel, pudding, bread, soups, stews and\u00a0even medicine. The fruit\u2019s impressive nutrient content (including vitamins\u00a0A and C, calcium, potassium, copper, iron, phosphorus, and manganese)\u00a0made an potent component of the indigenous medicine cabinet. The unripe\u00a0fruit was used to treat burns, gastrointestinal bleeding, and as an antiseptic. Eastern tribes enjoyed dried persimmons as a nutritious winter food.\u00a0In fact, the word persimmon comes from the Algonquian words for dried\u00a0fruit\u2014putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin.\n\nEarly American settlers in Virgina has their own relationship with persim-mons. The were introduced to the fruit by local indigenous tribes. Their first\u00a0interactions with the fruit were much like those of any modern American\u00a0who\u2019s dared bite into an unripe hitachi persimmon - bitter, chalky, fuzzy\u00a0awfulness. Captain John Smith once described his experiences with this\u00a0trixy fruit. \u201cIf it be not ripe it will drawe a mans mouth awrie with much\u00a0torment; but when it is ripe, it is as delicious as an Apricot,\"\n\nThankfully, as Smith forebears in his quote, early Americans eventually\u00a0figured out how long the fruit needed to ripen (thanks to their Native\u00a0American neighbors) . Soon after persimmons because a staple. They were\u00a0prized for their delicious flavor, high nutrition, and high pectin - making\u00a0they easily converted to puddings and conserves. Many also fermented it to\u00a0make spirits and even a vinegar like drink used as a coffee substitute.\n\nWhile the varieties we find on American grocery shelves and Frog Hollow\u00a0trees are quite different from the early american fruits, it\u2019s rather amazing\u00a0to think of our shared experience with our american ancestors in Jamestown. With Thanksgiving approaching, let us take a moment to give thanks\u00a0for all the gifts native americans offered and the tenacity of early Americans - without both of which we\u2019d never had a chance to taste the fruit\u00a0ourselves!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019m sure your tastebuds noticed, last week we welcomed the Fuyu Persimmon to our CSA shares. The persimmon is a very special fruit; a burst\u00a0of candy sweetness in a season of deliciously subtle flavors. In honor of our\u00a0newest addition let us share with you a brief history of this luscious fruit. The persimmon hails […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,35],"tags":[254,665,666],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-newsletter","tag-frog-hollow-farm","tag-jamestown","tag-persimmons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-15w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}