Photos: Harvesting Saguaro Fruit
Saguaro Harvest Workshop provides hands-on experience in picking fruit and making syrup.
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Participants pick Saguaro fruit during the annual Ha:san Bak Saguaro Harvest Workshop at Colossal Cave Mountain Park in Vail, AZ. Thomas Morrow, left, watches as Anja Lauer plucks the fruit and Christelle De Rente tries to catch it below. The workshop gives attenders a chance to experience hands-on what it takes to make a fruit-picker, harvest the fruit, and make saguaro syrup.
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Worskshop presenter Lois Liston talks about the Saguaro (Ha:san) cactus during the annual Ha:san Bak Saguaro Harvest Workshop at Colossal Cave Mountain Park in Vail, AZ.
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Lois Liston, right, leads workshop participants in prayers to the four directions.
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Thomas Marrow, left, secures the extension on a Kuipad, a long picking tool made of Saguaro ribs. Lois Liston, right, attaches a cross bar as Kristie Argenbright takes notes.
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Lois Liston demonstrates the use of the Kuipad picking tool to pop fruit from the cactus.
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Lois Liston peels open some fruit. The Saguaro has provided food, shelter and sustenance to the Tohono o'odham for hundreds of years.
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Anja Lauer, left, and Christelle De Rente harvest from Saguaros in the park. Teamwork means one picks and one peels.
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A push of the thumb pops fruit from the pod.
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One of the more difficult things to deal with is managing the long picking stick through the crowded desert.
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Sometimes a long stick isn't necessary at all.
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Pods can sometimes have spines. Anja Lauer uses a boot to clean them off.
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Once picking is done the group toasts their success with a sip of saguaro syrup from an earlier harvest.
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Worskshop presenter Lois Liston, right, watches as her son Dallas, left, pours a liquid mixture of water and the collected Saguaro fruit into a pot for heating. The mixture is boiled then strained several times to clear debri and seeds then re-heated and reduced to syrup.
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Liston stirs the boiling mixture of water and Saguaro fruit.
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The boiled mixture of water and Saguaro fruit is strained through a dish cloth to clear away debris and seeds.
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The resulting liquid is returned to the pot for further heating where it will reduce to syrup in several hours. The gallons of mixture made today will reduce down to be about an eight of an inch of syrup on the bottom of the boiling pot.
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