Rain, Persimmons and Pomegranates

It has been a very exciting last few days on the farm as we reach the end of October tomorrow.

We got the first decent rainfall since the spring with a quarter of an inch on Monday which all the plants and soil enjoying it.

While out prepping some area for lettuce transplants and pulling drip tape we felt it rain for a few minutes but later in the evening or overnight it must have rained much more for it to reach a quarter inch on the rain gauge.

Depending on the weather forecasting site there is a chance of rain the next few days although not a big storm expected as we have lots of work to do before that including harvesting some new crops.

In the last few months we have been working on finalizing some opportunities that we had to expand the farm and are going to be harvesting the first fruits off one of those properties this Friday to take to market on Saturday.

We are leasing a portion of Mike and Dianne Madison’s farm along Putah Creek just outside of Davis. They has been tending that land for over 30 years and we are honored to be starting to be caretakers of part of the land.

There are a great variety of trees on the property with large amounts of a few of them and lots of trials to see what does well on their farm.

Friday we will begin harvesting the persimmons and pomegranates from the property so we will have some freshly picked ones of both of them on Saturday at the farmers market.

The persimmons are Fuyu which is the most popular variety and a really tasty one. They can be eaten when they are crunchy or crispy but we have let them ripen a little bit more on the trees so that the flavor has developed more and they become softer.

Fuyus ripen due to the cold weather so they will become softer as we get colder temperatures because we are leaving them on the tree instead of the common method that harvests them under ripe and stores them in a cooler ripening them when needed.

In just the last week the pomegranates have ripened a lot and are tasting very good. The seeds have a nice mixture of sweet and tart which can be eaten as just a snack, added to a salad or any dish that could use a pop of flavor.

With the veggies as the weather cools down they are starting to grow a little bit slower but still a decent amount with days in the high-60s and low-70s forecasted.