How sumptuous bread justifies an arduous foray.
Photo Above: Elaine steadies a ladder while Sam picks persimmons minutes before the yellow jacket attack.
Photo by Bruce Ingram | Photo styling by Janette Spencer.
The foraging foray began innocently enough. Traditionally every autumn, Elaine, our grandsons Sam and Eli and I drive to a farm in Botetourt County, Virginia, to pick persimmons. Forgive me if I’m not any more specific than that, but the wild, native persimmon produces the most sublime fall fruit that these highlands have to offer. And Elaine turns those sweet, orange golf-ball sized globes into the most heavenly homemade bread imaginable.
One of the keys to my wife’s bread is mixing in the nutmeat from wild black walnuts that the boys and I earlier gather from our woodlot and along our rural road. Seeing, smelling and slicing that dark orange, nutty bread hot from the oven is one of the joys of rural mountain life.
On our most recent visit to the tree, only Sam was able to accompany us as Eli had afterschool basketball practice. To reach the choicest fruit, Sam had climbed a ladder while Elaine steadied it, and I walked around the tree to select where the boy would pick next. It was then that I stepped on a yellow jacket nest, which caused a squadron of the amber and black striped demons to go nuclear against me.
My first thought was that I had to protect my spouse and grandson. “Run to the truck!” I screamed. “Yellow jackets!” Fortunately, Elaine and Sam were on the side of the persimmon tree closest to the pickup and they, at the sounds of my distress, immediately began scudding toward the vehicle.
My concern for family members was totally unwarranted, however, as these wasps had clearly determined that I alone was the invading interloper. The entire streaming horde descended upon me like a living ball of fury. The first sting came under my right eye and the second jacket struck just below my right knee. Had their hastily conceived attack plan been to first blind, then immobilize me? It almost seemed so.
Unscathed, Sam and Elaine reached the truck’s safe interior first and I leaped inside last, only to discover that several more of the yellow jackets were fanatically trying to sting me through my overcoat. Hand-to-stinger fighting ensued with casualties on both sides until the human finally emerged victorious.
Too terrified to revisit the persimmon tree during daylight and also desirous to retrieve our ladder and gather our annual quota of persimmons, Elaine and I returned to the farm a few nights later. As she shined a flashlight up into the tree’s boughs, I safely picked persimmons under the cover of darkness. Yellow jackets don’t fly at night; nevertheless, we gave their nest site a wide birth.
Several weeks after the Homeric conflict and Elaine’s and my nocturnal gathering, Sam and Eli walked across the hollow from their house to ours to help make persimmon/black walnut pancakes for dinner. Our daughter Sarah and her husband David had a party to attend, and the boys were to eat supper with Elaine and me. My wife had sagely decided that the boys would be too hungry and impatient to wait for persimmon bread to come from the oven and cool. The bread baking could come later on a leisurely, wintery Saturday afternoon.
Elaine assigned Sam the task of stirring the pancake batter, which he attacked with a joyful frenzy while Eli’s job was to add the nuts and pour the mixture into a frying pan. I am constantly amazed at how my wife always makes each grandson feel that he is an integral part of the cooking process.
Soon afterwards, Elaine served us all steaming hot persimmon and black walnut pancakes, which the boys drenched with maple syrup.
I can’t wait for that winter day when we bake persimmon bread.
The story above first appeared in our September / October 2024 issue.
