Before our Dew Point Farm project, Jenn and I started a small community orchard for our Bibb City neighborhood, circa 2016 (as longtime followers will know from old posts back when we were just a slightly preachy little simple-living website called The Dew Abides, which begat this Substack).
On a tiny lot, we squeezed in a half-dozen blueberry bushes, five blackberry vines on a trellis, two sand pear trees, a fig, and a Fuyu persimmon. Later, when we were ordering more fruit trees for a different project, we added a pomegranate sapling to qualify for free shipping. There was a derelict corner of our own orchard we could tuck it into.
It grew well and fruited two years in. But the problem with community orchards — actually the idea of community orchards — is people can pluck what they want, whenever they want. People kept picking the pomegranates when the fruit appeared, not when they were ripe. Three years, we watched the fruit set, then disappear in July. And we would shake our fists at the sky, knowing that they wouldn’t be edible until October.
This year was different.
Either the fruit-pickers gave up eating that funky fruit, or they finally learned to wait for it to ripen, or maybe just some of the little pomegranates hid well enough on the back of the tree that they were able to realize their full potential.
Jenn and I never staked a claim on that fruit; it was for anyone. But we were thankful to at least get one of them after about seven years. We got two, picked just last week. Three, technically, if you count a little midgety one.
So what to do with them? Well, I cracked open Yvette von Boren’s fantastic “Home Made” cookbook (not a paid endorsement, though highly recommended), and we concocted a sort of simple syrup that was in her recipe for a pomegranate prosecco. We’re not drinking much these days, so we just added it to sparkling water for a wonderful, seasonal aperitif. So good, just before the weather changed!
Enjoy the fruits of the fall, y’all.