Fruit Gathering

I've been gathering fruit the last week or so, I have both persimmons and prickly pears. I'm not sure if I'll get enough to do anything special with them, which is sad, but we can always eat them raw.
Since the persimmons are ripening little section by little section I've been picking them, removing the seeds, cutting them into jam-able pieces, and freezing them. When I have enough then I can use them.
The prickly pears on the other hand need more preparation then that because you have to remove the mini-spines before you cook them for their juice (for jelly), but once you burn the spines off you want to cook them soon. Dilemma, dilemma. There is the option of driving around looking for patches of ripe prickly pears, but I'm not sure if I have that initiative.

The biggest reason I'm writing this though is to give a little advice.
I was stupid and picked the prickly pear fruit, which is sometimes called tuna(weird, I know), barehanded. It is possible to do so and come away unscathed, but not if you pick another one while holding one. I ended up with glochids all over my right hand and fingers, which is pretty nasty because it's an automatic hand full of itty bitty little splinters. The thing is I found a way to get almost all of them out virtually painlessly and quickly.
1) No pressure on the affected area
2) Run fairly warm, though not hot, water over the area until the skin is soft and the muscles are relaxed. This took me a couple minutes.
3) No soap! Just use a fine, non metal, scouring pad and rub.

It took me three scrubbings, but I only had three or four left after all that. It works, but what works better is being careful in the first place.

Prickly Pear

It's a genus, not a species, but there are so many species of Prickly Pears that it's very very hard especially since:
A) It's not the flowering season
B) I know nothing more about what to look for in cacti beyond their genuses. Is it round, tall, or flat?


Prickly Pear cacti are also known as Paddle Cacti which is easy to remember because they look like they're made up of lots of little ping-pong paddles.
They have two types of pokers: the long, straight spikes that are about 1-2 inches long, and the small barbed bristles. Both of these come out of the dark little polka dots. The fleshy pads are generally taller than they are wide, very flat, and are smaller at the bottom and rounded at the top. The flowers (and fruit) grow out the top of the pad. Even within species the color of the flowers can vary from yellow to red, but the look almost like a cross between tulips and roses at least as far as petals are concerned.
This particular species was short, no more than two feet, but depending on the species they can range from 1-6 feet tall and from 4 or 6 up to hundreds of the pads.

If you so happen to decide to eat the fruit of a Prickly Pear remember to peel it well or sand it well as the Indians used to. The little barbed bristles I told you about also grow on the fruit and that is not something you want stuck to the inside of your mouth/throat/stomach. From what I've read the fruit is safe to eat, you can even eat the new fleshy pads. But don't just take my word on it and go eat the nearest cactus, I don't want to be responsible should anything bad happen; go talk to someone who can actually identify the species of cactus and knows about poisonous plants. The ripe fruit looks like a red, puffed version the pads themselves.



Did you know? There's a species of Prickly Pear that grows from Illinois to New York. Yeah, Northern Cacti, can you believe it?