You gently palm the Adirondack Avocado’s smooth dimpled skin — neither deep green nor purplish-black, yet both — and it yields slightly to the touch. Perfect. Ripe. Ready to pull from the branch.
You cut it open, and the flesh is a creamy, pale green that deepens to a buttery yellow near the pit. Its texture is silky smooth and spreadable, no stringiness and no spoiled spots.
With respect to flavor, the Adirondack Avocado is subtle but distinctive: mellow memory of the tropics mingling with nuts and a hint of earthiness. It’s springtime fresh with an almost desertlike decadence, the perfect marriage of fruit and vegetable.
Have I primed your imagination? Lubricated your longing?
Sadly, friends, there is no Adirondack Avocado. Yes, there are avocados *in* the Adirondacks, and for this we are fortunate indeed. But they travel far to for our indulgence.
All of us who live in this North Country eat, but we mostly eat food grown out of this region.
Yes, it is a short growing season north of the forty-second parallel — and there is no such fruit as the Adirondack Avocado — but much more of our food can and should be grown locally. (Michael Phillips, “The Northern Forest Forum”, Winter Solstice 1992)
That perspective originated in this read-worthy article about community supported/ sustained agriculture and locally produced food.
Our longstanding membership with the community centered folks at Full and By Farm is testament to our commitment to hyper local food. And so is our extensive homegrown vegetable and fruit gardening. And this brings me — albeit in a meandering and roundabout way — to the seed from which germinated this quirky post.
“The avocados are planted,” May said, approaching me in the late afternoon. The knees of her jeans were soiled with dirt from kneeling in the garden.
“Avocados?” I asked.
“Yep. I finished with the leeks, so I went ahead and planted the avocados. Whole row’s done.”
“Oh, you mean the artichokes. That’s great!”
The confusion, she explained, between avocados and artichokes was a lack of familiarity with (and appetite for) either. I explained that avocado trees can’t survive in our climate. Of course, I’d only recently hypothesized and proved that artichokes could grow at Rosslyn. A monumental discovery!
But the prospect of an Adirondack Avocado has stuck either way me ever since. Time for a greenhouse?!
N.B. I’ve changed my gardening helper’s name. A totally reasonable mixup, but it just seemed like a better way to share the memory. Started with April, but we’re somersaulting into May, so…
What do you think?