Nature’s Forecast – Persimmons for the Season

The Blackberry team is always looking for what the land can tell us. Nature has so many clever and beautiful ways of sharing signs of the seasons and even expectations for what’s to come. One of our favorite, fun Fall traditions is cutting into persimmon seeds to see their Winter weather predictions.

Our persimmon trees yield plenty of beautiful fruit. Each Fall, when you walk through the Garden at Blackberry Farm, you’ll hear the persimmons hitting the ground as they fall from their tall branches. Before delivering the fruit to the kitchens to be reimagined in seasonal dishes, we take a minute to indulge in the weather folklore of the seeds.

We look to our fruit for Blackberry weather, but be sure to use locally-grown persimmons to get a guess at your regional conditions.

Cut into the fruit and take out the seeds. Wipe off the seeds to make them easier to hold steady as you go to cut. Stand the seed on its side between your thumb and pointer finger, and hold it steady. Align your knife on the thin edge and cut the seed in half long-way.

Now the fun part! Look at the shape of the white kernel inside. Does it resemble a spoon, fork or knife?

If your kernel is spoon-shaped, legend says that you can expect shovels, or spoons, full of snow! It’s a white Winter in your forecast.

A fork-shaped kernel predicts that while you may have some soft, light snow, you’ll experience a mild Winter season overall.

With a knife, you’re expected to have a frigid season with icy wind that will “cut like a knife.”

Ready to hear what the seeds said for Blackberry this year? We cut open several seeds, and we were greeted with a mix of forks and spoons! If the kernels are correct about what’s in the cards, we can expect a mild Winter with a fair amount of snow for East Tennessee.