How to Harvest Prickly Pear - Step 1: Picking the Fruit

Remember Baloo eating prickly pear fruit while singing about the "bear neceessities"?

No?

If you've ever hiked the Arizona desert in July or August, you might have been tempted to grab one of the beautiful fruits growing on the prickly pear pads, however you'd quickly have an experience like Mowgli's. We humans don't have Baloos claws, so we need another way to get them off the cactus.

I've grown to love turning prickly pear fruit into juice, syrup, ice cream, and all kinds of other treats every summer and I'm going to show you what I've learned over the years, starting with how to pick them.

This video will show you the tools you need and how to use them to pick the fruit.