Guava Foraging

Many of the common wild guava trees are dropping fruit. In fact, they've been going off for a couple of weeks now. The sweeter guavas that I'm intentionally growing are just starting to produce on the homestead. I have one with a white interior, and another that's pink, both nice flavored. These are the ones we save for ourselves. The wild ones don't taste too nice and are sour. They go to feed the livestock. 

Some years are better for guavas than others. This year is one of those abundant years. I have 3 tree patches that I visit on my way home from town, plus I have 2 friends that save me the guavas that fall near by their homes. This gives me plenty of fruits for the livestock to enjoy. Right now I'm getting between 6 and 10 gallons of fruits a day. That's a lot, but the animals eagerly consume them all. 

The sheep, goats, and donkey will eat them fresh right out of the bucket. The pigs prefer them mashed or broken up, mixed with cooked cracked corn (oats or barley is acceptable too) or dog kibble, and a few blenderized papayas or pineapple skins mixed in. The chickens eat them mashed and mixed in with their regular slop. I've had other people tell me that their animals won't touch them. I suppose mine have been so accustomed to Mom's Famous Slop & Glop that they are willing to eat all sorts of weird stuff mixed in it. Good thing because those guavas help extend their food supply. 

Using Guavas

My current over abundance of guavas is fortunately not a problem. My chickens eat the vast majority of them. I wait until the fruit is quite soft, mash them with a hand mixer, them mix them in with cooked rice and other kitchen scrapes. They get to eat all the wild guavas that I gather. Those wild ones are far too sour for me, but the hens don't complain. 

I do have a sweet guava tree in the farm. And it produces enough fruit for my needs because we're not big guava eaters. 

 

Uses for guavas.....

... Fresh eating. Everything is edible - skin, seeds, flesh. 

... Added to a tropical smoothie. Drop in whole, uncooked or cooked. 

... Juice. I cook them in water (just enough to cover the fruits) then smash them using a hand mixer. When cool, I strain off the juice and use it for other recipes. Usually I'll strain the leftover pulp through a sieve to remove the seeds. 

... Guava pulp. Cook. Cool. Pour off the juice (for guava juice). Smash with a hand mixer. Force the pulp through a sieve to remove the seeds. (The discarded seeds either get added to my next smoothie or go into the chicken feed.) If the guava pulp is too thick, I'll simply stir some guava juice back into it. 

Guava juice and pulp can be used in all sorts of recipes. While I'm not a fan of pure guava juice, I like to mix it with other fruits to make a tropical drink. The juice can also be used to make guava jelly, though I've never tried to do it myself. 

Guava pulp lends itself well to kitchen experimentation. Guava jam is a no brainier. The pulp or juice can also be added to salad dressings, as a flavoring in batters and other coatings, in cookies/cakes/pies/icings, to flavor sour cream or cream cheese dip, as a sauce over ice cream, etc. Once I was at a friend's house for dinner and had guava glazed ham. She also makes a mean guava glazed chicken wing! Another friend made me a guava flavored flan. Yummy! 

Since guavas are seasonal, I tend to make my excess guavas into pulp then freeze it for future use. 

Guava Abundance

One of the names that this year could have would be Year of the Guava. I've never seen such an abundance since moving here. Even the wild guava trees are full of fruits. 

My edible guava tree is producing very large fruits this year, besides making lots of them.....

While I have trimmed by domestic guava tree to prevent damage to it, the wild guava go untended. As a result many of the trees have branches bending waaayyyyy over. Looks bad, but it makes for easier picking.