Persimmon + Pawpaw Orchard
Wild Indigo Forest Farm · Southern Indiana
Persimmon + Pawpaw Orchard
Here, the orchard does not sit apart from the forest. It grows inside it.
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 Our 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
Chef Anh Le + 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.
photos coming from this season's harvest
ripe fruit + autumn color
harvest + kitchen
And Then the Forest Turns Orange
As pawpaw season gives way to autumn, persimmons carry the orchard's color story from green and gold into glowing orange. Our native persimmons are another piece of the edible landscape here, connecting forest, wildlife, harvest, and the kitchen.
Worth Waiting For
Persimmons ask for patience. We wait for the fruit to become fully ripe and deeply sweet, then let the harvest decide what comes next in the Wild Indigo kitchen.
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.