Abbey Duke had never tasted a pawpaw fruit in 2010 when she planted four pawpaw trees on the small Intervale farm associated with her South Burlington-based Sugarsnap Catering. Since starting the two-acre plot a few years prior, Duke had favored growing fruits and vegetables that other farmers are less likely to cultivate. "The nice thing about catering is that we can almost always figure out a way to use something," said Duke, 54, who is also a Democratic state legislator representing part of Burlington's Old and New North Ends. Intrigued especially by unusual perennial fruits, Duke planted persimmons, red and black currants, gooseberries, and jostaberries along with pawpaws, a North American native that is the only cold-tolerant member of the tropical custard apple family. Fourteen years later, pawpaws have proven among the hardiest of the bunch. When Tropical Storm Irene submerged the fertile Burlington floodplain, Duke figured her 1-year-old trees wouldn't make it. But they rebounded after that flood and all the ones that followed, including the devastating year-upon-year flooding in July of 2023 and 2024. Looking to a waterlogged Intervale future, pawpaws seem like a promising crop. "They've survived I don't know how many floods," Duke said on a recent Monday afternoon. She was standing beside two of the original trees, now 20 feet tall, their branches lush with foliage resembling large avocado leaves and clusters of oval green fruits reminiscent of small mangoes. This month, the Sugarsnap team expects a bumper harvest of around 400 pounds — far more than easily deployed on its catering menu. But marketing the unfamiliar fruit is a challenge, especially within its short ripeness window. An abundant crop is worth little if Vermonters don't want to buy it, Duke noted. "People aren't lining up for them like they do for strawberries," she said. "There's got to be a business there." The pawpaw has one alluring feature: its tropical flavor, unexpected in a locally grown fruit. When Duke first tried a pawpaw from one of her maturing trees, she found it to be deliciously different from any other Vermont crop. The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is distantly related to soursop and cherimoya and was most likely carried north in the digestive tracts of fruit-loving mastodons. (It is not related to papaya, although that is also sometimes called pawpaw.) The tree thrives in the wild in several East South Central states; Ohio has an…