Photo by Shawn Poynter To ensure that persimmons are ripe, never pick them from the limb; wait for them to fall.

October brings so many wonderful things. My woodshed is filled with a winter’s full of warmth. The hillsides, aflame with vivid colors, are as pretty as a mortgage paid in full. Post-season baseball reminds me each October that no matter how many games I see, I still haven’t seen it all. And October is Eat Country Ham Month – honestly, it is. 

But one of October’s greatest pleasures is the wild persimmon that I grew up with and that we have in abundance here in southwestern Virginia. Unlike the larger Asian varieties, our native persimmons are about the size of a quarter with up to eight seeds about half an inch long, are more nutritious and possess a more intense taste.

Persimmons are not popularly considered to be berries, but in terms of botanical morphology that is exactly what they are, as is the tomato. Some variety of the native or common persimmon is found from southern Connecticut to southern Florida; westward through central Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, and central Illinois to southeast Iowa; and south through eastern Kansas and Oklahoma to the valley of the Colorado River in Texas.

When ready to eat, the wild persimmon is very soft -- too ripe to be mass marketed but excellent to carry from field to kitchen.  Perhaps the fact that you don’t find these delicacies in super markets is the reason that they are often misunderstood. I have received comments such as “I have always considered persimmons as ornamental-- and that not very much”.  Most recently a friend wrote to me: “Persimmons are lovely. I just never knew what to do to make them edible!” 

Persimmons can be as tasty as an apricot, if they're ripe.

The first thing to do to make them edible is to wait until they are fully ripened. By that I mean, have fallen to the ground and are soft -- squishy even. By then they have sweetened to a point that possums, raccoons, deer, wild turkey and some humans will stand under the tree and enjoy them raw. I relish eating them raw as I gather them. There is a widespread belief that the first frost is required to sweeten the persimmon, but frost has nothing to do with it.  Nor can you always judge ripeness by the color. To be safe, don’t pick them from the tree. Wait until they fall on their own or can be released with a gentle shaking of the limb. If you find them on the ground and they are soft, they should be sweet. 

Photo by Kent Kanouse The downtown of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Las Vegas is part of the Main Street movement, which links historic preservation with economic development.

I live in a small Main Street town, which means we’ve followed the National Main Street Center’s methods for restoring and revitalizing our historic downtown.

The historic downtown is chock full of “unique entrepreneurial businesses,” in the language of the Texas Historical Commission, including a seemingly endless variety of antique stores.

But I don’t spend a lot of time downtown. There’s nothing I need there. I don’t need antiques. I need toothpaste, something to cook for supper, and toilet paper. I can’t get those downtown.

On those rare occasions when I do go downtown, I have to compete with tourists to get my business done. The streets and sidewalks are congested with traffic, and parking is at a minimum. While I’m glad that tourists come and spend their money, I really don’t want to get into a nest of them.

That’s the problem with the Main Street program. It does a great job of helping towns preserve and gussy-up their downtowns, but in and of itself, does it really serve the broader local community?

Now before you come after me with pitchforks and tell me how many small businesses Main Street has spawned and how many jobs it has provided, just listen a moment. Those small businesses? Many don’t last, and you end up with dreams rotating through empty store fronts. According to a study done for Southeastern Geographer in 2002 on predicting the success or failure of Main Street towns, the author states, “The 'boutiquization' of small town America led to increased vacancy rates because many of these retail establishments (such as craft shops and antique stores) had a difficult time making a profit and staying in business.”

Those jobs?

Photo by urbangarden Badluck Way is set in the beautiful, harsh and complex ecosystem of southwest Montana. The owners of Sun Ranch manage the 25,000-acre spread to accommodate both wildlife conservation and cattle. The tension between these goals serves as a focus for Bryce Andrews’ memoir.

Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West. By Bryce Andrews 2014. Atria Books. $25. 256 pages

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

You’ve always believed that keeping your possessions where they belong is the right thing to do. Putting away tools has saved you frustration. Packing gear in one place has saved you time. But as you’ll see in the new memoir Badluck Way by Bryce Andrews, there’s also a wrong way to stow your stuff: a man’s boots, for instance, do not belong beneath a desk.

Ever since he could remember, Bryce Andrews was fascinated by anything Western. He’d loved Western art, spent summers as a kid on the spread of a family friend, had learned to ride a horse and mend fence. So, following a broken heart and a few wandering months around the country, he took a job at a Montana ranch.

The 25,000-acre Sun Ranch sat at the edge of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness in southwestern Montana and was owned by a Silicon Valley millionaire. Wildlife was plentiful there, and conservation was important, as was managing livestock so that cattle could graze and thrive alongside native elk and wolves that came over from Yellowstone.

Starting the first of May, the job consisted of moving cattle, fixing fence, caring for livestock and cleaning water tanks. It was a life Andrews grew to love again: he spent his days doing chores, learning from the two other ranch hands, and exploring wherever the four-wheeler took him: through grassland and canyons, past pugmarks and bones, beneath Big Sky and stars.