Our own fruit and nut trees

As mentioned earlier, achieving sustainability in food production is much about being local and growing own food when possible. In addition to the Roadhouse Garden (see previous post), we have quite a lot of own fruit and nut trees in the company’s properties. Most of them are in the courtyards of our rental houses, in the yards of our restaurants and in the gardens of the company owners’ house. Some trees can also be found from our chefs house as well as the house of the owners of The Pavilion, one of our rental houses. Yesterday I found out also that there is also three Xiang Chun trees in the courtyard of the house where me and Michelle live. We even tried some Xiang Chun yesterday – it was weird, but ok.

Anyway, after planning the garden, the next step for me in the project was to make an inventory of what we have – how many trees, what kind of, where – and estimate the yields and harvest times. We’ve always known that we have own fruits and nuts and we have even used them in the restaurant, but no one had formalized it, no one had consistently check what we have and wrote it down. After all, the first step in this project should be to find out what we actually have to begin with. So my task was to, in a way, make it official and formal. I also named the trees according to where they are, to make the inventory more detailed. I am not going to make here a complete list of each tree we have, but a list of how many trees we have of each species:

Sugar Pear: 11 trees, estimated 33kg a year
Persimmon: 15 trees, estimated 279kg a year
Chinese Tates: 5 trees, estimated 14kg a year
Chestnuts: approximately 62 trees, estimated 125kg a year
Walnuts: 3 trees, estimated 60kg a year
Mulberries: 1 tree, estimated 10kg a year
Hongguo: 6 trees, estimated 14kg a year
Plums: 1 tree, estimated 3kg a year
Xiang Chun: 10 trees, estimated 40kg a year
Green Apple: 2 trees, estimated 7kg a year
Wild Peach: 2 trees, estimated 3kg a year
Wild Flower Pepper: 1 tree, estimated 5kg a year
Apricots: 2 trees, not giving fruits this year

As it appears, we have quite a lot fruits and nuts available for use, as well as Xiang Chun, which is a kind of eatable leaf, especially popular in northern China. The biggest yields will be of Persimmon and Chestnuts, as can be seen from the list above. It is going to be fun to figure out what to do with hundreds of kilos of Persimmon! Persimmon could be seen in way as a trade mark fruit of The Schoolhouse, as we have a lot of it and even one of our rental houses is called The Persimmon Court. The Persimmon we have is a species called The Japanese Persimmon, native to China. These are sweet, slightly tangy fruits with a soft to occasionally fibrous texture. The Japanese Persimmon is the most common kind of Persimmon in the world. Many of you probably wonder what is Hongguo - it is Chinese hawthorn which is a tart, bright red, and resemble small crabapple fruit. They are used rather lot in culinary purposes, for example different kinds of Chinese snacks and jam. There are also drinks made out of it. Hongguo is good for medical purposes as well, as it is know as an aid to lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and treat some heart related diseases. We probably won’t be making any medicine out, though, as this program is about sustainable food. Chinese hawthorn is related to Pihlaja, which grows also in Finland.

So, now we now what we have, but that’s not enough, is it? The main task is to plan and formalize what to do with all the fruits and nuts and how to incorporate it to menu planning and other business activities. To do that, firstly you have to know when different trees are about ready to be harvested. For this I got much appreciated help from Li Haixin, many thanks to him.

Estimated harvest times in time order:

Xiang Chun: May
Apricots: June-July
Mulberries: July-August
Plums: August
Wild Peach: August
Wild Peppers: August
Walnuts: September
Chestnuts: End of September
Sugar Pears: October
Apples: October
Hongguo: October
Chinese Tates: End of October
Persimmon: November

During the spring and summer, we are going to plan with our chef Randhir how to use all this fruits and nuts as efficiently as possible. The idea is to get the whole yield used, in one way or another. Obviously, we don’t grow everything we serve, but we most definitely want to serve everything we grow. Some part will be used fresh in the restaurant, some part will be made juice, jam, pickle etc. Some will be served in the restaurants, some will be sold to customers to take away. First thing to be planned is how to use Xiang Chun, as it is the first to be harvested, in May. Rest will follow. Then we are going to document the plans, so they can be used in the following years as well. This way we could have a kind of program how to best use our own food resources.

I will keep you updated on this subject! I will also make a picture post to show pictures of our trees.

Pietari