Henny Penny Farmette

The Japanese Hachiya persimmon is a small to medium-size tree that packs a lot into a landscape. In autumn, the tree’s large, leathery leaves turn orange, red, and yellow, reminiscent of the gorgeous fall colors of trees growing in the east and midwest. Of course, mine are growing on my farmette in Northern California.

After a persimmon tree sheds its canopy of leaves, its scaffold continues to provide visual interest in the garden. Globes of orange fruit hang on for weeks, looking a lot like Christmas ornaments.

An easy way to eat a fresh Hachiya persimmon is to first wash the soft, ripe fruit. Then, slice off the top, scoop out the pulp with a teaspoon, and enjoy a mouthful of the flavorful fruit that resembles sweet pudding. A word of warning about biting into unripened fruit. It is extremely astringent and unpalatable.

Growing the Hachiya persimmon is relatively easy. These trees aren’t fussy about soil and don’t need a lot of watering. In dry climates, give the tree a weekly soaking during its growing season. Persimmons are relatively disease-free and don’t attract a lot of pests.

Train them to grow into a vase shape during the first three to five years. Be mindful that the fruit is produced on new wood. However, a severe pruning will reduce your fruit crop. Once the tree is established, do your pruning during the tree’s winter dormancy to remove dead and diseased branches or those that are crossing other branches.

If you enjoy reading about gardening and other country living topics and also enjoy a good cozy mystery, check out my Henny Penny Farmette series of novels. These novels also include wholesome recipes, tips for keeping chickens and bees, and gardening info based loosely on my experience as the real Henny Penny Farmette proprietress. The novels are available online and everywhere books are sold.

Enjoy reading about farm topics? Check out my Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries. Chocked full of farm trivia and helpful advice for keeping chickens and bees and growing heirloom fruit and vegetables, all three novels are available online and in bookstores everywhere.








Get the three-book series of cozy mysteries with elements based on the real Henny Penny Farmette
These novels include elements based on the real Henny Penny Farmette



A Beeline to Murder–When the town’s celebrity pastry chef is found dead, Abby Mackenzie (a former cop who supplies the chef with her organic lavender honey) discovers the chef’s secret private life suggests the killer might be local.



The Murder of a Queen Bee–The botanical shop owner and friend of Abby Mackenzie doesn’t make it to a party where she’s the guest of honor. Her death leads Abby to speculate that friends of the deceased might be hiding her killer.



A Hive of Homicides–Abby attends a vow-renewal party of her best friend and is an ear witness to the murder of the newly arrived re-married couple. The husband’s philandering past establishes a pool of suspects but Abby is convinced that there’s more to the murder a scorned lover’s revenge.

It’s nearly Thanksgiving and our Henny Penny Farmette continues to bring forth delicious, organically grown edibles for our table for which we feel truly grateful.

We give thanks, too, for neighbors like Dan and Annie. This past Sunday, Annie carted to our house a box of persimmons and bags of apples and pomegranates. We harvested all our apples last month so her timing was great. While we have persimmons and pomegranates hanging on the trees in our small orchard, many are not yet ripe enough to pick.

Ripe pomegranate

Last month, I froze cubes of butternut squash in freezer bags and readied pumpkin flesh for pie. While picking a few ripe persimmons recently, I noticed that we’re sharing them with a visitor who seems to sneak in and munch during the night. I’m thinking the culprit could be a raccoon, opossum, skunk, squirrel, fox, or a gaggle of wild turkeys that seem to make an annual pilgrimage through our area.

The two main types of persimmons grown on our farmette are Fuyu and Hachiya. The Fuyu is rather squat-looking and Hachiya has an elongated shape. Both take on a bright orange color in the fall. When fully ripe, Fuyu is sweet and crunchy like an apple whereas the Hachiya is soft like jelly. Though commonly thought of as fruits, persimmon and pomegranate are technically berries.

Pomegranate and persimmon are plentiful this time of year

Fuyu persimmons can be peeled, sliced, and eaten fresh, roasted, or tossed into salads. They add a vibrant splash of orange to a winter salad that could include slices of citrus and pear tossed with greens,walnuts,  pomegranate seeds, and goat cheese.

Pomegranates are ripe when their leathery outer covering turns red and begins to crack. Inside each pomegranate is white tissue separating compartments of ruby-red seeds called arils.

Ripe pomegranates hang heavy on the trees this time of year

The seeds are high in antioxidants that reduce inflammation and free radical damage. Though they are messy to remove, the pomegranate seeds are healthy and nutritious additions to any diet.

To preserve pomegranate seeds, freeze them on a baking sheet. Once frozen, slip the seeds into freezer bags and return to the freezer. The seeds can be kept frozen for months.

Pumpkins come in a variety of sizes and types. Personally, I prefer the sugar pumpkins for recipes calling for pumpkin as an ingredient.

French sugar pumpkin are small but perfect for pies

This week as we prepare for the big feasting day of Thanksgiving, lots of cooks are already baking pumpkin pies.  Many will use canned pumpkin as a shortcut to their pie preparation but pumpkin filling made from scratch is especially delicious.

Our pumpkin pie features leaves of pie dough, brushed with egg, and sprinkled with sugar before baking

The old fashioned way to make pumpkin pie from scratch is to use fresh, organic pumpkin puree from the produce that you’ve grown in your garden. The process to make a pie takes longer because first the pumpkin must be peeled, seeded, and cut into manageable pieces and then cooked down. Then just follow your favorite pumpkin pie recipe.

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Taking care of yourself is one of the most important things you can do over your lifetime and it starts with healthy ingredients and fresh produce.

My newest self-help wellness book is  THE SELF-CARE PLANNER, A Weekly Guide to Prioritize You.

My books are available for purchase through online and traditional bookstores everywhere. Buy The Self-Care Planner and other titles offered by my publisher, Simon & Schuster online. Visit my author’s page at https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Meera-Lester/2137649823

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Check out more recipes and tips for healthy country living in my Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries (Kensington Publishing, NY).

This three-book series of cozy mysteries features elements based on the real Henny Penny Farmette

Hachiya persimmons are delicious when they ripen to softness

I awoke today intending to collect some persimmons and gather in the ripe pomegranates from my garden But the news on my local TV station made me think twice about going outside to work.

The Bay Area air quality would be four times as bad as in Beijing (where many wear masks to avoid breathing the particulate). I’ve lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s and can’t remember suffering through such terrible air quality. Gardening was out of the question.

Our Bay Area air is so awful because of the “Camp Wildfire” that recently broke out up north. The inferno stoked by high winds was so fast-moving that it pretty much destroyed the town of Paradise (near Chico). Those winds also swept the smoke southward into the Bay Area. Although I live spitting distance from Mount Diablo, I couldn’t even see the mountain yesterday or today.

What I could see was a blood-red ball hanging in an opaque sky. Never saw the sun look like that.

Not only are wildfires raging on in Northern California. With Southern California’s Woolsey fire threatening Malibu and a section of nearby Thousand Oaks, I worry about family and friends in SoCal. Also, I am praying for those affected by the recent Thousand Oaks mass shooting. Not only are those folks grief-stricken, they now have to evacuate as fire threatens their community.

The rainy season in Northern California runs from November to April, but unseasonably warm weather (in the 80s F. last week and 70s F. this week) has been the norm. Fire danger remains high until the rains come.

I hope firefighters in our Golden State and everywhere else know how much their work and sacrifices are deeply appreciated.

Ripe pomegranates hang heavy on the trees this time of year

The smell of smoke outside is overwhelming. So while nothing gives me greater pleasure than being outside working in my garden, I won’t today. Not when I can’t breathe.

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From here on the Henny Penny Farmette, I write nonfiction self-help books about health, wellness, and spirituality; and for fiction, I write mysteries that incorporate aspects of farmette life like keeping chickens and honeybees and growing heirloom fruits and vegetables.

Find all my books at Amazon.com, through Barnes and Noble, at Kobo Books, and elsewhere online or in traditional bookstores everywhere.

All available online and in bookstores everywhere

Anyone can find peace, clarity, and focus…all it takes is a moment

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Succulent, sweet, and juicy, ripe Hachiya persimmons are worth the wait

If you love persimmons, it might interest you to know they are from a genus known by the Greeks as Diospyros kaki, “fruit of the gods.” But these sweet fruits must be fully ripened before consuming. The Fuju and Hachiya are the two main types grown in Northern California gardens. My favorite is the Hachiya; it has to be one of the most sensuous and luscious fruits on the planet to eat.

The Fuju fruit is more like an apple in shape and texture. You can differentiate it from the Hachiya because Fuju is squat and firm-fleshed, reddish yellow, and about the size of a baseball whereas the Hachiya fruit is pendulous-shaped, soft like an overripe plum, orange-scarlet in color, and about the size of a hefty apple or softball. Tamopan is a larger persimmon with a shape like a turban whereas Chocolate is so-named for its brown streaks; its flesh is quite sweet.

Persimmon trees look stunning in a garden, possessing outstanding ornamental qualities. They are relatively pest-free and produce consistently when mature. These small trees are easy to grow, have striking foliage and interesting branch structure, exposed after the leaves have fallen in autumn. They can even be espaliered against a frame or wall.

Hachiya persimmons are astringent on the tongue unless eaten when they are fully soft-ripe. Birds love them, too, so you have to pick them before they are pecked. Ripen in the kitchen before eating or cooking with them. If you want to dry persimmons, pick while the fruit is still firm and with some stem. Tie a string around the stem and hang in the sun until the fruit becomes dried. It will taste something like a high-quality prune or lichti.