AURA

It’s a family affair, so if you’re a tourist or whatever, you have to catch it at Saguaro National Park where some of the O’odham do a demo. It’s a sacred New Year’s event on their calendar that starts with the summer harvest. There’s more detail in the Park Service brochure on the text version of this note. No wine though. Sorry.

“Saguaro Fruit: A Traditional Harvest”, National Park Service, excerpt

"The O’odham divide the year into 13 lunar "months," starting with Hashañi Mashad, or Saguaro [harvest] month. The Saguaro fruit wine imbibing ceremony to bring the summer monsoon doubled as the O’odham New Year's celebration. The temporal regularity of the saguaro fruit harvest made syrup for Saguaro fruit wine making available during the latter half of June. Because the O’odham processed ripe fruits into thickened syrup which could be stored for a while before fermentation, the actual date of the New Year could vary during the first half of July, depending on the end of the harvest and the beginning of the monsoon.

"The Tohono O’odham people use the flowers, fruit, seeds, thorns, burls or boots, and ribs of the saguaro for food, ceremonies, fiber, manufacture, trade…. The Tohono O’odham people use the fruit and seeds to make a variety of food products including ceremonial wine that is used in the Navai't, and the Vikita, or harvest ceremony. After a saguaro died, the Tohono O’odham people used the ribs and 'boots' that were once nest holes for a variety of structures, tools, instruments, and other useful objects. They also used the fruit and seed products as trade items with the neighboring Pima tribes. Other people and tribes have been documented using the saguaro including the Western Apache bands, the Hualapai, Yavapai, Maricopa, Pima, Seri, and Yuman speakers and southwest tribes in general.

"For harvesting the saguaro fruit, a pole is constructed from 2 or 3 long ribs from a dead saguaro lashed together… used to hook the fruits or nudge them off the plant. The fruit is then collected off the ground.

Pulp is scraped from the fruit pods into buckets for carrying back to camp. An experienced harvester may collect 12 to 20 pounds of pulp in two to three hours. It takes 20 to 30 pounds of fruit to produce a gallon of syrup. The fruit is mixed with water and boiled over an open wood fire. It may boil for an hour or more. The boiled mixture is strained to separate the juice from the pulp and seeds and the pulp mixture is spread on a tarp or board to dry. The dry pulp is then pounded to remove the seeds. The dry pulp is added to boiling syrup to make jam; the seeds are used for meal, chicken feed, and candy.

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