Harvesting Mesquite for the First Time

I went to the Santa Cruz River Farmer's Market last Thursday to enjoy some Peruvian music and the new location of the market.  (Congress St. just west of I-10 on the left (south)  I brought a small baggie of mesquite I had picked from mesquite trees in town and one prickly pear fruit from my friend's front yard.  Desert Harvesters was there giving demos about how to harvest and use mesquite and prickly pear pads and fruit.  In Spanish, the pads are called nopales and the fruit, tuna.  Anyways, the tuna I had was almost ripe but not quite.  I opened it to taste.  Mmm.   But lots of seeds to spit out.

My mesquite were ready to turn into flour.  So this morning my family enjoyed mesquite pancakes topped with Tucson raw honey made from mesquite and desert wildflowers.  I bought the honey from the Tucson Honey Company at the market.  I turned the mesquite pods into flour in my Vitamix using the dry container.  I then sifted the flour to make it extra fine.  If harvesting large quantities of mesquite I recommend using the hammermill that the Desert Harvesters own.  It will be available to use in September.

http://www.desertharvesters.org/

I bought a book that Desert Harvesters wrote called Eat Mesquite!  It has great information about how to harvest desert food, focusing on mesquite, along with recipes.  I highly recommend it.  Since I had great success and my family LOVES the pancakes, I hope to harvest gallons of mesquite pods so we can have enough for all year.  You know it is ready to pick when the pods are brown and come off easily when pulled.  If they are still green, they are not ready.  Never pick pods that are on the ground.  An animal may have peed on them.  Also, don't pick pods with black dots as that is toxic mold.  Pods with little holes in them are good.  It just means a bug hatched and escaped.  No harm there. The harvesting season lasts until September.
Happy Mesquite Harvesting!