Persimmon & Pawpaw Forest Orchard
Wild Indigo Forest Farm · Southern Indiana
Persimmon & Pawpaw Orchard
Forest → Harvest → commUnity → Table
The orchard does not sit apart from the forest; it grows inside it. Pawpaws thrive as understory trees beneath the canopy, while native persimmons rise through the same living landscape. Forest-to-table here means learning what already grows well in this place, tending it carefully, harvesting in season, and carrying that food into our kitchen and commUnity.
Asimina triloba
Pawpaw Season
One of North America's native tree fruits, growing here as part of the forest rather than in spite of it. Pawpaw is also known as the Indiana banana, and depending on where you wander, somebody has probably claimed it as their state's banana too. The pawpaw appears to have solved interstate diplomacy by simply being delicious everywhere.
From Forest Floor to Table
When pawpaws ripen, we gather them from the forest and turn that brief, abundant season into food we can keep sharing after the harvest has passed. Their soft golden pulp finds its way into seasonal desserts, drinks, retreat food, kitchen experiments, and frozen pulp for later use.
Tastes Like Sunshine
Our frozen pawpaw pulp captures the fruit at harvest so its tropical, custardy flavor can travel beyond the few short weeks when fresh pawpaws are falling from the trees.
Pawpaw pudding, made with our forest-grown pawpaw and finished with edible jewelweed, coreopsis, aster, and butterfly weed flowers.
Forest → Harvest → Fermentation
From the Forest,
Into Our commUnity
Find her at the New Albany Farmers Market every Saturday.
Devon's work has grown beyond the kombucha kitchen, too. She is the author of the forthcoming Backyard Climate Activist: Healing the Planet from Home, exploring meaningful change through choices at home, in our commUnities, and as consumers.
Wild Indigo Pawpaw × Basil & Blossom Co.
Wild Indigo pawpaws have made their way into a seasonal kombucha with Basil & Blossom Co. at Devon's commUnity Kombucha Kitchen at The District (think Logan Street Market, but in downtown New Albany).
One of the things we love most about Devon's kombucha is how approachable it is. People who normally say they do not like kombucha often find themselves loving hers. It is bright, balanced, and easy to enjoy without the aggressively fizzy, sharp experience that can turn people away from kombucha in the first place.
And Devon does not stop at the bottle. She makes sourdough pretzels with kombucha beer cheese that may permanently rearrange your standards for what a pretzel is allowed to be. This is what we love about Devon's work: fermentation feels welcoming, playful, delicious, and connected to everyday food rather than something you need to already understand before you are invited in.
Forest Harvest × Local Craft
Wild Indigo Pawpaw × Anko Sushi
Wild Indigo Pawpaw × Anko Sushi
Our friend Anh Le, owner and chef of Anko Sushi, has been giving Wild Indigo pawpaw a completely different life by turning it into pawpaw ice cream for his handmade mochi.
Elise is admittedly biased. After eating omakase in California and around the country, including celebrated tasting counters where a single piece of nigiri can cost what an entire omakase plate does here locally, she keeps coming back to what Anh is creating here: extraordinary food that remains remarkably approachable.
Forest-grown Indiana pawpaw becoming handmade mochi at a friend's sushi counter is exactly the kind of local food story we want more of.
The meals worth “crossing town” for are happening in small, independent places where the food, the people making it, and the neighborhood are all part of the story. It is worth noticing how many under-celebrated restaurants across Kentuckiana are minority-owned or shaped by chefs, owners, and families who have brought food traditions, techniques, and lived experience from other countries. Those voices should not have to become trendy before the city pays attention. Anko is one of the places we want to celebrate loudly.
Diospyros virginiana
Persimmon Season
Another native tree fruit woven through our forest orchard. Persimmons begin green, slowly turn golden-orange, and deepen as autumn cools. Sweet only when truly ripe, they are one of those fruits that teach patience before they offer dessert.
A Fruit I Grew Up Loving
Persimmon Season Has Always Felt Like Magic
Growing up, my family could not afford the kinds of vacations many of my friends took, so our traditions were simpler and, looking back, incredibly special. Summer meant camping and a trip to Holiday World. In the fall, we would camp in Mitchell, Indiana, visit my stepmother's best friend, and go to the Persimmon Festival. Those weekends became part of the magic of autumn for me. I fell in love with persimmons, but also with all the ways people turned this fleeting native fruit into puddings, breads, desserts, and family recipes.
This year, we just so happen to be judging at the Muncie Persimmon Festival. While Wild Indigo's persimmons will not be showcased there this year, we fully expect that to change. Once our infrastructure is in place, we hope to bring our harvest to future festivals and to host annual Pawpaw and Persimmon Festivals here at Wild Indigo, celebrating two extraordinary native fruits that deserve a much bigger place in our regional food story.
A Forest Namesake
Meet Persimmon
Our forest kitty, Persimmon, earned his name because he loves climbing persimmon trees and their wonderfully rough, alligator-scaled bark. He has terrified his parents more than once by scrambling 30-plus feet into the canopy, then eventually making his way back down as if the entire ordeal were perfectly reasonable. Persimmon was here from the very beginning: we found him on the first day we came to look at this land, before Wild Indigo was even ours to steward. We like to think the forest sent him to us exactly when our hearts needed him most.
Worth Waiting For
Pawpaws and persimmons do not fit neatly into a grocery-store system built around long shelf life and easy shipping. Their seasons are brief, their fruit is tender, and many people have never tasted one. That is why we want to put more attention on them. Both are native fruits with deep roots in this region, yet their short seasons and delicate shelf life mean many people never encounter them in a grocery store or learn how to use them. By growing, harvesting, cooking with, and eventually gathering people around pawpaws and persimmons here at Wild Indigo, we hope more people get to taste the fruits that have been growing in this part of the country all along.
Come Experience the Forest
Stand Beneath the Canopy.
The orchard is one way into Wild Indigo. Gather here beneath the trees, listen, wander, rest, and experience the forest in season.
Harvest Moon & Autumn Equinox Sound Bath
September 26 · An evening gathering with sound, seasonal ritual, the labyrinth, trails, and the forest moving toward autumn.
The Receiving
November 7 · A full-day retreat devoted to receiving, rest, creativity, bodywork, ritual, and time held by the woodland.
Keep Wandering
The Orchard Is Only One Layer of the Land.
Follow the pawpaws back into the woods and you will find trails, wetlands, gardens, habitat, gathering spaces, and a forest farm that changes with every season.
Support the Forest
Support the care of the pawpaws, persimmons, and forest already growing here through a symbolic tree sponsorship.
Sponsor a Tree at Wild Indigo