Prickly Pear season

[DesertBull]

I wonder if you have to draw a "fruit tag"?

[muskrat]

Bwahahahaha

 

Anyway, I called and "no natural products can come off of State Trust Land". That's wild - how many people just do whatever? What about the cows tearing everything all to heck? Interesting..

 

He did say BLM is great to work with - find some of their land...

[CouesWhitetail]

Yeah, I kinda suspected that. Don't you have some USFS land near you? Or maybe some private land? Maybe you can trade them some juice for permission to harvest on their land.

 

Oh and by the way, I don't remember if I posted this or not, but there is another species of prickly pear, which I think may not be native to AZ (?) called Indian fig. I only see it as an ornamental. But they grow very large and have apple shaped fruit that doesn't get as red/purple as regular ppear. Anyway, the juice from that is really good! It's much sweeter, but it's also more muscelagenous (sp?). It's almost like a smoothie consistency by itself. It's got more a green color to the juice, but it's suprisingly good! We have a big one at our house and several businesses in town have them and let us pick the fruit.

 

Amanda

[muskrat]

Its mostly state trust land. There is some BLM and private. I'll have to hit the maps.

[muskrat]

No good deed goes unpunished I called BLM. They said that the State retained the rights to all plants and cactii - I needed to call the State Dept of Agriculture. I called there, got transferred around 3 times, and ended up at some guys voicemail box. All I wanted to do was take my daughter out, and pick some prickly pear fruit, so she could try making jelly. It's really no wonder that the average Joe Citizen does whatever they want. It's hard to figure out the rules; the Departments are too short-staffed to enforce them, if you do figure them out...

[DesertBull]

Just go pick some. If the cops stop you, tell them your name is Lark, from Queen Creek.

 

 

[muskrat]

State Ag guy called me back. There are no restrictions on prickly pear fruit. Their (State Ag Dept) jurisdiction includes BLM land, state land (excluding state trust land) and private land.

[CouesWhitetail]

Interesting news from the state agriculture guy. Why would state ag have jurisdication over cactus though? Could the Dept of Ag guy just been saying that there are no dept of ag restrictions on moving prickly pear fruit within the state? Dept of Ag may just be worried about disease transmission with regard to moving fruit. But their probably still are restrictions on taking plant parts from state lands and federal lands. It reminds me of going through the border in nogales with deer and the USFWS says they don't have restrictions on some parts of the deer, but dept of agriculture does. So one agency will tell you there are no restrictions, but what they really mean is that there are no restrictions on that product within their own dept.

 

Anyway, Marshall, my husband says email him and he can hook you up with some private land that you can pick on. Email him with your current address so he can recommend the people closest to you. He says you have his email address already.

 

Amanda

[muskrat]

Thanks Amanda. My website is having a get-together next weekend, on the southern end of Hwy 79. My daughter and I were planning on attending. While pig hunting on the weekend, I found vast areas loaded with prickly pear that would've been easy picking for my daughter, and was a convenient stop on the way to the get-together.

 

This started out as a "bonus" to our day together next Saturday, not the "main project" :-)

 

Anyway, I found some BLM land on the map by the Florence-Kelvin Hwy, I may just swing by there. We'll see. I'll e-mail Paul as well.