Who knew that we lived in rural San Clemente? Yes we can walk to Starbucks, Trader Joe's and the movie theater in less than 5 minutes, but we also have ourselves some livestock to feed and a tiny loquat orchard (ok, so it's only one tree) in our yard.
I finally remembered to bring the camera when we visited the sheep, the donkey and the pony the other day so that you can all see what I'm talking about. The animals got lots of great carrot and radish tops this week from our basket. Einar loves visiting the animals, but won't take part in the actual feeding. That's fine by me since I like the feeding part a lot.
A week or so ago I saw lots of yellow fruit on the tree in our yard. I've never seen fruit like that before, but I asked a friend of mine who has live in Southern California forever and also has a horticulture background and she said without a thought that the tree was a loquat tree. After some online research I found out that they are edible and related to apples and peaches. We don't see them in the grocery stores because they are so fragile. The world's largest producer of loquats is the Japanese (I didn't see any while I was there) and they can also be found in the warmer climates of North America. I harvested ours tonight and added them to the salad as well as made a strawberry-loquat sauce for our pork tenderloin. They are quite good, but require a lot of effort. I might make a small batch of jam with the rest of them or maybe just eat them for breakfast.
