North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

I used to buy carob pods to eat, we just gnawed them.  They were sweet and 
mild tasting, the kids loved them.  I'm assuming that the "locusts" that 
John the Baptist lived on were carobs.  I can see that there would be more 
of the fallen pods than one or two enterprising poor folks might be able to 
eat, but seems like it would be entirely possible to sweep them up, sort 
them, shake off the dust and take them to sell at the farmer's market.  They 
keep forever once dried, so if a batch were sold to a regular vendor, the 
seller would be able to take all his money at once and not have to rent a 
stall.
   Re fallen fruit being codling moth riddled, yes it tends to be here in 
Tennessee too, but I spent years dragging home all the apples I could get 
and drying them.  Spidra  said she keeps track of fruit trees not on private 
land, these were trees in yards where the people said sure, take all you 
want off the ground.  Only in the severe drought in the 80's, when gardens 
dried up altogether, did the usual gardeners take an interest in their apple 
trees and decide to keep the fruit.
   Pears on the other hand, tend to be in good shape with little bug 
damage, and folks will often let you pick all you like.  I found that around 
the college there are many rental houses, with fruit trees planted by a 
former and more frugal generation.  The students living in them had no use 
at all for the fruit.  Many of those trees have been cut down in the 15 yrs 
I've been here.     Donna