This is already the most Decemberest December in years!
- Dan
- Dec 8, 2025
- 5 min read
It has been colder and wetter than expected so far this month, and I am a little slow getting the newsletter out, but here we go.
We are the third owners of our house. The guy who built it, literally with his own hands, and his wife, were the first family who lived here. They were an older couple and didn’t need anything fancy, and let’s just say, they didn’t see any need to build ‘to code’ out here in the boonies. The second family was the father and mother of my bride. They were not farmers, they just wanted to retire out of the hustle that they saw Huntsville turning into. But my father-in-law was an engineer, so he rewired the whole house, way beyond what ‘code’ asked for. Which brings us, well, to us. We are semi-retired, sure, but we are, as you have learned by now, anything but retiring. When Stacy started making bread for sale, and I started a couple of my own hobbies that needed room, we decided that we really needed room to work. And room to store stuff. And a room we could keep the cats out of. And a room with better light. So, two weeks later, boom, new workroom.
We had a great company (Sand Mountain Remodeling) come over, rip out an entire bathroom, walk-in closet, useless exterior door, and tiny kitchen pantry—none of which were any good at their jobs—and we now have a room with floor to ceiling shelving, a deep sink, TWO work tables, and thanks to my father-in-law’s rewiring ground work, the crew was able to install four new electrical outlets for running mixers, or dryers, or proofing boxes, or whatever other tools we need.
Stacy can now do five or six times the number of batches of dough at a time, I have a sink deep enough to wash and sanitize all of my brewing supplies and tools, and we have tabletop room enough so we don't get in each other’s way. Long term, this is going to make it so much easier to process fruits and veg for market, store our sorting and packaging supplies, and keep everything in its place without having to hunt it all down from two or three places every time we need it.
Of course, that is just one aspect of winter we are still working on. Next, as if you couldn’t guess, NEW TREES!
Have y’all ever heard of a Medlar? Well, to be fair, we hadn’t either. Rather, when we were both living and traveling in Europe and the Mid-East, we had eaten medlar fruit without ever really knowing what it was. It is a pretty weird little guy. It has to over ripen to become ripe. Meaning, you pick it when it is ripe then put it on the shelf for a few weeks to soften. (How convenient I just made a bunch of new shelves.) It tastes like a mixture of spiced applesauce, apple butter, or a toffee apple, with notes of cinnamon, date, and citrus.
When Stacy read about these, we both kinnnnd of remembered them from our youth…but the more description we read the more certain we became. We will be planting these as soon as it isn’t quite so Decembery out there and hopefully will have fruit in two years.
Also added to the new types of fruit list are the following:
Ukrainian Snowy Mespilus - The European version of the Juneberry (which is related to the blueberry), with mild-flavored pink-to-purple fruits that are rich in iron and copper (most sources say the best use of the berries is jam, jelly, compote, or alcohol).
Big Hip Apple Rose - Huge hips that can be squeezed for an applesauce like fruit, or processed for oil for skin treatments.
Cornelian Cherries - Not really a cherry, but an edible dogwood relative, with larger pear-shaped fruits.
Jiro Persimmons - A non-astringent variety of the Fuyu Asian persimmon, known for its sweet, crisp, and mild-flavored fruit that can be eaten while firm, similar to an apple.
In my last missive, I told y’all that we were going to see the wizard in Mississippi to gain some knowledge and pick up some trees. And wow, that trip was productive. We picked up more fig, apple, pear, and plum varieties that have proven performance in the SE USA. The plums, pears, and apples are already planted. The new figs will winter over in the greenhouse and go in the dirt in February or March.
New figs Southern native apples:
Yellow Long Neck Carter’s Blue
Ronde de Bordeaux Yellow Hamilton
O’Rourke Chickasaw
Green Ischia Harrison
Angelique Hewes
St. Clair
Shell
Alabama Cotton Gin
Cauly
Pears: Plums:
Ayers Sonny’s Yellow
Leona Guthrie
Orient McKibben
Potomac
The varieties won’t mean much difference to the eating public, but for us, the reasons to have different ones are to extend our fruiting season, cross pollinating because some fruits are not self fertile, and also, dangit, the STORIES, of some of these trees!
Like for example, Alabama Cotton Gin: It was one single oddball tree, not found anywhere else, but made great fruit and plenty of it. It was saved by some sharp eyes and a successful propagation effort. Carter’s Blue and Cauly are also natural sports that became successful varieties thanks to small farmers continuing to propagate them and continue the line.
The wizard says ‘I like a pear tree that makes a statement…The Potomac makes a statement’ and a boatload of fruit, too.
This spring, we had just shy of twentylevenjillion blooms on our existing plum trees, but lost them all due to a late April frost. Hopefully these three new varieties will defeat the weather this spring.
It is, according to whichever weathercaster you like, going to be a pretty Decembery weekend. Y’all should come to the Orion in Huntsville this weekend for Christkindlemarkt to get some last minute, local, shopping done for your favorite people. We are going to be there with Stacy’s art, and a space heater, so stop into the tent and say ‘howdy’.
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