Versatile, Healthy … and Everywhere!
Riding in the rear passenger seat of a UTV nicknamed The Beast, as the sun begins its slow slide to the horizon line, Victoria Barrera Cappadona points out likely targets to me in our evening hunt. In front, her husband Justin pilots the vehicle through waves of tall grass and along worn paths that crisscross fields and thickets on the Cappadona Ranch. Occasionally a deer or rabbit darts past as the vehicle journeys across sections of the 2,400 acres that make up the family property in Linn, Texas.
While a rifle is nested in the center console, the game we’re hunting is not what you’d expect; it’s mesquite trees.
The bane of Texas ranchers and farmers, mesquite trees carry a bad rap in the state. Known as the devil with roots, the devil’s root, a noxious pest and water thief — it’s a tree with a thorny place in the hearts of landowners. However, at the core of Cappadona Ranch, the metaphorical bark is peeled off to reveal the once omnipresent and vital resource stretching over the centuries — when mesquite trees were a part of the daily life and diet of the state’s inhabitants.
“Back in 2012, we were going through a heavy drought, and the land was barren and dry. My father-in-law had come in and said to me, ‘Everything is yellow and dead — except the mesquite trees.’”
McAllen native Victoria became an unlikely champion of mesquite through her business, Cappadona Ranch, on the Cappadona family ranch lands. With the beans of mesquite trees, she makes jellies, flour, caffeine-free coffee, tea, soaps and lotions, products she developed and honed over the years.
As she tells it, 13 years ago, a drought changed how she looked at mesquite trees forever.
“Back in 2012, we were going through a heavy drought, and the land was barren and dry. My fatherin- law had come in and said to me, ‘Everything is yellow and dead — except the mesquite trees,’” she recounts.
Cappadona wondered if there was any use for the trees, which seemed to flourish despite everything. Her father-in-law, Fred Cappadona, shared with her that a neighbor down the way would take the long bright golden seed pods the plants produced and make mesquite bean jelly with them each year for Christmas.
With the family property stretching over 2,000 acres and full of mesquite trees, Cappadona did her homework and found this project that, at the time, seemed an ideal activity for her and her young family to take on. Eventually, in 2015, her husband suggested it might just be the moment to take her time-tested jelly to the people as a business. At the time, she had no idea how this decision would thrust her into years of discovery into the once widely known uses and concoctions made using the mesquite tree’s beans.
For the uninitiated, it may seem strange that the tree’s beans are, in fact, edible, and certain varieties are even famed for producing sweeter beans than others — like the honey mesquite which grows across the ranch. It does take some doing to get to the center of a mesquite bean, as Cappadona can attest. Without their ranchs’ hammer mill to crush the outer hull surrounding the meat, she says the hulls are likely to crack teeth.
While Cappadona had to research how to work with mesquite beans, these skills would have been fundamental knowledge to the Indigenous people in areas where mesquite flourished. Spanish explorer Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, while stranded on the Gulf Coast, recorded in the 16th century seeing them prepare mesquite beans.
As translated by Fanny Bandelier, de Vaca described:
“They brought us their children to touch, and gave us much mesquite- meal. This mezquiquez is a fruit which, while on the tree, is very bitter and like the carob bean. It is eaten with earth and then becomes sweet and very palatable. The way they prepare it is to dig a hole in the ground, of the depth it suits them, and after the fruit is put in that hole, with a piece of wood, the thickness of a leg and one and a half fathoms long they pound it to a meal, and to the earth that mixes with it in the hole they add several handfuls and pound again for a while. After that they empty it into a vessel, like a small, round basket, and pour in enough water to cover it fully, so that there is water on top. Then the one who has done the pounding tastes it, and if it appears to him not sweet enough he calls for more earth to add, and this he does until it suits his taste. They all squat around and every one reaches out with his hand and takes as much as he can.”
Today, Cappadona’s mesquite bean flour has the added benefit of being gluten free, being high in protein and having a low glycemic index. With a natural sweetness, the flour is perfect for baked goods and as a healthier sweetener for diabetics or those wanting to cut back on sugar.
In the future, Cappadona hopes more people can see mesquite trees the way she does — as a healthy resource that deserves more credit than tales give it.
“You can’t get rid of it, and it’s going to be here to stay. So we might as well make use of it. If it’s healthy and it is good for you and is all around us in Texas — we gotta share,” Cappadona says.
