The Taste of Fall

Fall is most definitely here.  Hot, instead of iced tea in the mornings, oatmeal instead of cereal for breakfast.  Crocs and t-shirts are replaced with boots and a flannel shirt for morning barn chores.

Fall here at Krazo Acres has my eyes, ears, nose and taste buds becoming accustomed to different Autumnal occurrences than what I grew up with back in Illinois.

Up "north", there was a very heavy leaf smell when the trees started dropping leaves, but I only occasionally smelled that here.  Come to find out, that leaf smell was from cottonwood trees and we don't have a single one (that I am aware of) on the property.  There was also that "frozen" smell....and that smell doesn't start here until sometime in late winter.  Here, Fall smells like wood burning stoves and the occasional waft of buck goat piss (I didn't say they were all good smells).

I smell stinky.....Oh so stinky!

Up "north", hearing geese calling all year was nothing new as the Canada Goose population basically stayed (and crapped) throughout the year.  But here, the occasional honking of high-flying geese signifies much shortened daylight and crisp mornings.

The fall leaf colors back home were much more spectacular than here, but the dogwoods, hickory sassafras and sumac add just enough color to make it pretty.

Dogwood spared by the bulldozer.

I don't remember there being a "taste" of Fall back in Illinois, with the exception of EVERYTHING being Pumpkin-Flavored for a solid month, sometimes two months until Thanksgiving.  But here, my new Fall Flavor is Persimmon:

When I bite into a squishy-sweet-spicy Persimmon, my entire being radiates "Autumn".  And since moving here, Fall hasn't officially started until I taste one.  Or thirty.

Some almost-ready persimmons.  For goodness sakes, don't ever
eat a persimmon that isn't totally ripe (i.e. squishy)!  Best bet is to
get the ones that have already fallen to the ground, usually after
a cold snap or freeze.

We probably have two dozen young persimmon trees here on the homestead, and I'm trying to keep Paul from bulldozing them and the animals from destroying them.  For some reason there seems to be a lot of small, dead persimmon trees and the live ones are not more than 4" in diameter.  I'm not sure if the forest is just too dense for them to grow bigger or if there's some weird disease that is striking them (and the sassafras now that I think about it).

I've been harvesting a bunch of seeds (i.e. eating a lot of persimmons) to build up my seed stock for the Seed Swap, and wanted to remind you all of the tab on the top of the homepage.  I'm still collecting some wild seeds, so if you're waiting for your little package of seeds (yes, I'm talking to you Kelly....sorry!!!) I didn't forget about you, really I didn't!  I've got envelopes with names on them, ready to send out once I get all my seeds harvested.

But in the meantime, I think that I should go find me some more persimmons on the ground to eat, I mean, collect seed.