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Dec 5, 2010

Harvesting autumn fruits with my kids

Today my family visited My wife's father who lives with his family in Nara to help harvesting persimmons and kiwi fruits which are planted in his garden.

Unfortunately we saw less fruits on the trees than usual because the heatwave at this summer might affect the productivity of the trees according to her father.

There are 2 persimmon trees in the garden and the fruits are located on the top of the trees so I have to climb up to the roof of his house to harvest them.

The type of persimmon fruits shown above has a lot of persimmon tannin (astringent) so the taste is too bitter for us to eat! After harvesting them they are dried outside for a few months to get rid of tannin and we can enjoy dried persimmons.

Some persimmons are eaten by birds, mainly crows. They are so smart that they can recognize which fruits are sweet leaving bitter ones.....

The other persimmon tree shown above is planted behind his house and it is a sweet persimmon. Can you recognize difference between astringent persimmons and sweet ones? Sweet ones are more round-shaped than bitter ones which look like pointed-shaped.


As you see the above photo, we have to take a risk to harvest the fruits! There is no roof to go up around the tree but only thin brick wall and I dare to stand on the wall and use 'a long shaft nipper' to pick up the fruits. You see my daughter ready to catch them! No risk, No return. That is what my kids learned today, I hope.

Eventually we harvested about 20 persimmon fruits today. Some fruits have crack but that's ok for us to enjoy the taste.

-to be continued.

-- from iPad

1 comment:

Mark Willis said...

Great to see the kids helping out -- I hope they like eating the fruit.