Opening Credits:

Stella—Another one... And you go all the way around your saguaro and see the... get the ripe ones.

In the Museum:

Stella—Yea, this culture is dying. It's like I said, nobody's keeping it up. There's so much out there in the desert, you know.
Visitor—Which one?
Stella—There's so much food out in the desert that we used to eat. And our people, our young generation, are not, you know, going out there now, you know, to appreciate it.

Stella—So, I think this year’s gonna' be a good harvest.
Visitor—The drought is actually...
Stella—Even though the drought, yea.
Visitor—...it's in your favor.
Stella— That’s right.

Outside:

Stella—When we go do our saguaro harvest we have many saguaros to go to. So when we come up to a saguaro we usually try to walk around and find the right ones, and the right ones will be the red ones that you see up here. And I see, let me see, one ripe one right here and, I don’t know, my pole can reach the one way at the top. But usually the ones we can’t reach we leave for the birds. But I don’t think my pole will reach, so I’ll get this one right here. This one right here. And our pole is made out of two saguaro ribs, as you can see. And the top part, which we call our hook is made out of greasewood branch. There’s another one over here. We use greasewood, creosole branch because it’s much stronger than the saguaro ribs. And sometimes you can’t, oh! That’s great! Sometimes you can’t help but knock some of the green ones. But that’s okay because the more green ones you knock down the fruit ripens quicker. The other fruit. Another one, and you go all the way around your saguaro, and see the right, get the right ones. Okay, I’ve knocked all my red ones down, so let me get my pole. I got it caught on here. I’ll lay my saguaro rib right there. Now some of them the birds have already gotten to. In fact, all of them. So we don’t have any fruit to show you. But these, there’s no fruit, all the birds—that’s okay, they have to eat too! But let me show you how we pick our fruit. See, when there is a fruit like this, okay, we’ll pretend there is a fruit inside, all you have to do is break this little stem off and you cut your fruit with it. It’s got, comes with it’s own knife and you open it up, pretend there’s lots of fruit in there. But there’s no fruit and your fruit would be inside of here—like a strawberry. I think I got --, oh, this is, another one here, see there’s no fruit. Oh, here’s one. No, they're all no fruit. But this is the way we pick our fruit in the desert.

Visitor—And it looks like a strawberry?
Stella—Yeah, when it’s fresh.

Visitor—And then what do you do next?
Stella—Then you’ll put it in your bucket. You’ll put your fruit in your bucket and you’ll throw your pods on the ground and leave it for the birds or the coyotes. They’ll come and eat it.

Visitor—Are the doves the ones that eat it?
Stella—The doves will go up there and eat all of them.
Visitor—Do other birds eat them too or just…?
Stella—Oh yeah. Cactus wrens are out there. We have woodpeckers. And what other birds do we have? All kinds of birds. I can’t remember all of them now, but… And that’s our saguaro picking and we do this everyday. Llike morning, we have our picking early in the morning when it’s cool and, uh, take our bucket and our pick and we go out there and we don’t bring the peel home. All we bring is fruit home. We cook that and that probably makes two jars of syrup. So you can see that it doesn’t make very much when you pick fruit. You have to go out there everyday to pick the fruit.

Visitor—You don’t put any sugar in it?
Stella—No, it’s all natural. There’s no sugar added to it.
Visitor—And it stays that beautiful color?
Stella—Yes, they all have different colors. There’s some that are so pretty, real bright violet looking colors. And then some are dark and, like the ones that are dried, they will fall to the ground and, you know, you can pick right off the ground the dried ones. And then sometimes they’re in the saguaro and all you have to do is just hit it and they just fall. You just kinda touch them and they all fall. And some of them are very stubborn too. Some won’t come down you have to kinda fight with it.

Visitor—Do they come down all in one piece? Or is it goo? What is the fruit like? Is it just one thing, like a plum or a strawberry?
Stella—It’s whole, like a strawberry inside. And some of them, they all come in different sizes too. Just like strawberries. And some of them are small and some are huge.

Visitor—Someone said you could dry them and eat them.
Stella—Yeah. Well, you pick them dried. You can’t take the fresh ones and lay them out to dry. They dry in the pods, or they dry up there on the saguaro and they fall to the ground. But you can’t take a fresh fruit and dry it. You have to cook it the same day when you pick it or if you have a cooling place like, we’re out in the desert and we don’t have, all we have is ice chests to keep them cool. We have to cook it everyday to make our syrup and our jams.

Visitor—Do you separate the seeds out or do you just put that in?
Stella—We separate them after our first cooking. We separate them. We lay them out in the sun and then we take the juice that we’ve dipped from the first cooking and we lay the fiber and the seed out in the sun to dry. And then we screen. We pour the first cooking juice into a cheese cloth into another pot. And that you put back over the fire and that will cook down to serve. And it takes three-to-four hours to cook, so our morning pick we start working on our syrup because we know it’s going to be an all day thing. And by the time it’s done -- by 4 o’clock, 5:30 -- we’re ready to go out and do the evening pick. So this is repeated day-after-day, and we do this everyday because when the rains come it destroys the fruit. We can’t pick anymore after the rains have come. It destroys the fruit.

Visitor—Does the jam need any refrigeration?
Stella—No, not after its cooked. You just jar them and put them on your shelf. They will last up to two years. Look at the big egg thing you saw. That’s 50 years old. So you can imagine how long the dried fruit will last.

Visitor—So those seeds you took out at the first cooking, is that no value to you?
Stella—No. No, we use everything. You know, we don’t throw anything away. Everything’s used. The fiber is used to put back in the jam, it’s a thickener and the seeds we grind up and use for porridge. You feed it to the chickens or the doves or the birds.

Visitor—I’ve tasted the syrup from the prickly pear fruit. Is it the same?
Stella—No, no.
Visitor—Can you describe it?
Stella—The Saguaro fruit is much sweeter than the prickly pear. And I think the Prickly Pear, when they make jam out of it, they put pectin in it and sugar, so it’s not natural.

Visitor—What is the stick wound with? Is that just regular twine?
Stella—No that’s bailing wire. Yeah, it’s something strong. I’ve gone out there and it’s broke on me, so I had to go back to home and tie it back together. That’s all it is, is two saguaro ribs together and creosole.

Visitor—Well, I really want to try it.
Stella—Okay.
Visitor—I’m gonna try it at my house.
Stella—Oh. I thought you were going to try it here?

Visitor—How do you do the wine? After the first cooking?
Stella—The syrup. We make wine out of the syrup.
Visitor—But you take it through the regular process then just leave it in the pots or…?
Stella—Mm-hmm.
Visitor—What causes it to ferment?
Stella—The heat and the water. If you add wate,r or if any bit of water touches the syrup, it ruins it. It’s so afraid of water that it -- you’ve destroyed your syrup if any water touches it.
Visitor—Could you still make wine out of the fruit?
Stella—It has to be cooked.
Visitor—Now the syrup: you can just put on a shelf and leave?
Stella—Mm-hmm. Jar it.
Visitor—And how do you cut the syrup? With how much water to then let it ferment? One-half to one-half?
Stella—It’s like making punch.
Visitor—Okay. To that kind of consistency?
Stella—Mm-hmm.
Visitor—So almost three-quartered. Ferment for how long?
Stella—Well till you taste it. Ya' know how your wine tastes? It’s got that nice sweet, tangy taste to it. Like, everyday when I cook my syrup I rinse it out -- my pot -- cause, ya' know, the syrup still sticks to it. Rinse it out, and I put it in a jar.
Visitor—And that ferments?
Stella—And I want to make wine out of it so we don’t waste anything.
Visitor—You can’t ever buy saguaro wine.
Stella—No.
Visitor—You can buy the syrup occasionally. Well, once in a while at the trading post just as you go on Coyote Hills.
Stella—They sell some?
Visitor—They have in the past.
Stella—Well then, you could probably buy some there.