rural life

Gifts from the Soil

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

DSC_0001 smAccording to Wikipedia, the price of porcini mushrooms (Boletus edulis) ranges from $20-$80/kg in the U.S., though it’s been known to rise to over $200/kg (wholesale) in years when it is scarce.

Porcini is expensive because of its ecology. It is a mycorrhizal fungus, meaning it lives in association with the roots of plants. This is a mutualistic relationship—the plant provides sugar, and the fungus provides nutrients. Neither one can grow properly without the other. Porcini’s mycorrhizal partners are oak trees. In order to grow porcini, you have to grow oak trees, so it is difficult to cultivate. The result is that porcini is largely collected from the wild, and is subject to wide fluctuations in production.

Sitting down to a picnic lunch today (in a location that shall remain secret), Ian and I picked 730g of porcini. It’s very early in the mushroom season, and quite dry, so we were surprised to see it, though Ian regularly finds it nearby. Ian manages several hundred dollars worth of porcini foraging in the autumn, even calculated by the lowest prices. It’s a delicious and welcome gift that is overlooked by thousands of passersby.

Porcini is a firm and meaty mushroom. Strongly flavoured, a little can go a long way when it needs to. But in autumn when the porcini are fruiting, we need not skimp, and a meal can easily include half a kilo of mushrooms. I dry the excess for use over winter in soups and stews. It goes well with thyme and rosemary, and lends a deep earthy flavour to dishes.

So, thanks to whoever brought these two non-native organisms—oaks and Boletus edulis—to New Zealand. Their presence is a gift to our table.

Trimming the Hedge

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Hmm...do you think we could have some more?

Hmm…do you think we could have some more?

We trimmed the hedge today, a job we love so much, we’ve been putting it off since November last year. It’s a day’s hard labour for both of us (with the kids pitching in as long as they get to hang out on top of the hedge).

The only good part about trimming the hedge is the well-deserved beer at the end of the day. A homebrew and crackers with my favourite home made goat cheese, Bishop’s Corner. Almost worth trimming the hedge just for the excuse.

Old Farmers

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My winter goat feed was delivered yesterday afternoon by the same father/son pair who delivers it every year. “Dad” isn’t a day under 90, and his son is in his late 60s. I always leap to help when they arrive. They would happily unload all the hay and stack it in the shed for me, but I can’t watch these two elderly gentlemen hauling hay bales while I do nothing.

Truth is, many of the neighbouring farmers could trade their tractors in for walkers. They work until their bodies give out, or until an accident or death claims them.

You might wonder why. Most of these guys are sitting on a fortune of land. They could sell out and retire in style instead of working themselves to death.

Paths wide enough for a walker?

Paths wide enough for a walker?

I understand, though. Will I give up gardening as long as I can drag myself to the garden? No. It’s who I am. Even injury can’t keep me away—I’ve been known to do my gardening on hands and knees when a back injury prevented me from standing. Farmers are the same. Farming isn’t a job; it’s an identity. To retire is to lose oneself. The 90 year-old who delivers my hay every year is cheerful and spry for his age. He will always be a farmer. One day he’ll stop working, but not until he stops breathing.

Water

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waterglasssmI was most of the way through a pond life lesson and leading 30 kids back to the nature centre when I had my first real lesson in dehydration. My world went black. I fainted. When I came to, I retched until long after my stomach was empty. Years later I watched a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer do the same after a long hot day in the field.

For a while, a small skink lived in our house in Panama. We named him Smaug. One day we found him listless and dull. It was the dry season, and we wondered if he might be thirsty. We offered a jar lid of water. He instantly pounced on it and began to drink. He was pert and perky the next day.

Last week, our son was complaining about helping with a garden task. He was dragging his feet and grumbling. “Have you had anything to drink today?” asked Ian. No. A glass of water, and he was a different boy—energetic and helpful.

Water.

Taken for granted when it’s there, terribly missed when it’s not.

I’ve been thinking a lot about water lately—naturally so, since it’s in such short supply here at the moment. I am ever grateful for the new well, and its ability to keep the vegetable garden green and our water glasses full.

We lost the old well in the September 2010 earthquake. When the power came back on, after four days of near-constant shaking, the pump poured out a slurry of sand instead of water. We spent five months trying to salvage the old well. They were five months of not knowing whether we’d have water or not each day; of carefully filling every vessel we could on the “wet” days, so we were sure to have water on the “dry” ones; of daily conversations with the technicians at Allied Water, who began to feel like family, they were here so often. More than once, I washed the laundry with rainwater in a 5-gallon bucket, just as I used to do in Panama. The garden went without, so we and the animals could drink.

It was a relief when the new well was dug, and we could again count on water for drinking, cooking, washing and irrigating. The careful habits stuck, though, and I try to make every drop count. And just in case, a week’s worth of drinking water sits in the shed, and a barrel of rainwater stands ready for watering and washing.

The Food Year

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GardenYearThe modern food system, with international trade and refrigerated transport, ensures that fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and other summer crops are always available, even in Maine in February. Want eggplant parmesan for New Year’s dinner? A special cucumber salad for Valentine’s day? Even in Maine, it’s no problem—you’ll find the ingredients in the supermarket.

A gardener’s food year is more seasonal. Some might say having year round supplies of summer fruits and vegetables is a great thing, and I don’t deny its appeal. But there is something to be said for seasonality. Nothing tastes sweeter than the first strawberry of the year, when you’ve been dreaming of strawberries for months. Nothing is more poignant than the last tomato, knowing it heralds winter, and eight months wait for the next juicy bite. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Vegetables herald, define, celebrate, and farewell seasons and annual events.

It’s difficult to capture the essence of seasonality in the garden. There is the early spring scrounge for anything still alive and edible, while you madly plan and plant for the future. There is the overwhelming abundance of summer, when the question shifts from “what is there to eat?” to “what needs to be eaten?” There is the frantic preserving of late summer, when you realise it all has to end. There is the calm of autumn, when the larder is full, and you know you can curl up like a chipmunk in your well-provisioned nest when the winter winds blow.

I tried to capture some of the garden year’s seasonality in this little graphic. It includes most of the annual crops we grow, though some are lumped together and others left out to minimise clutter. None of the perennial crops are included. But I hope it gives you an idea of what’s in and coming out of the garden at different times of year.

Special thanks to Ian for writing the R code to create this nifty little graphic.

There’s only two things that money can’t buy…

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DSC_0033 smTrue love and home grown tomatoes—the only two things that money can’t buy, according to singer Guy Clark. I could add a few other foods to that list, but he’s definitely right about the tomatoes.

Home grown tomatoes are the only ones we’ll eat any more. Life’s too short to eat the store bought ones. I plant 6 or 7 varieties every year—a couple of new ones, and a bunch of old favourites. Each variety has different uses.

Brandywine is without a doubt, the best tasting tomato on the planet. So good that I plant it every year, even though the summers are really too short and cool for it here. For raw eating, nothing beats a Brandywine.

Delicious is almost as good as Brandywine. It’s my insurance policy; it grows better in cool weather than Brandywine does. I’m sure to get some Delicious, even if the Brandywines don’t give well, or they all get eaten by the birds (they think Brandywines are best, too, and even eat them green).

Amish Paste is robust and prolific. Unlike many other paste tomatoes, it manages well with erratic watering. Fleshy and dry, it makes great sauces.

Russian Red is my prolific, hardy workhorse tomato. It has small fruits with a fine, but not stellar flavour. Its value lies in its ability to flourish in cold weather, ripening fruits long after other varieties have succumbed to frost.

Suncherry is a lovely red cherry tomato that not only fills lunchboxes with juicy goodness, but also dehydrates well, providing us with lovely sweet/tart dried tomatoes all through winter.

Of course, the best way to enjoy a tomato is standing up in the garden, but here’s one of my favourite tomato dishes. This is straight out of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison. Make it with the best tomatoes you have, and don’t use an iron skillet or the tomatoes will taste tinny.

Tomatoes Glazed with Balsamic Vinegar

1 ½ pounds tomatoes

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 plump shallot, finely diced

salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatoes into wedges about 1 ½ inches across at the widest point. In a skillet large enough to hold the tomatoes in a single layer, heat the butter until it foams. Add the tomatoes and sauté over high heat, turning them over several times, until their colour begins to dull, about 3 minutes. Add the vinegar and shallot and shake the pan back and forth until the vinegar has reduced, leaving a dark, thick sauce. Season with salt and plenty of pepper.

Pest Control

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slug1cropAs an entomologist, I’m often asked, “How do you deal with (insert pest name here)?” What people really want to know is how they can kill said pest, so I usually give a two-part answer that goes something like, “Well, you can use (insert name of some agent of death), but what I do is…”

What I do is a reflection of my philosophy about humans’ place in the ecosystem, and how I believe we should treat fellow living things. If I had to boil it down to basic pest control strategies, it would be these:

1) Know thine enemy. Learn the life history and ecology of your pests. When do they emerge? How do they feed? How do they home in on your crops? Where do they overwinter? When you understand the pest, you can modify your garden to minimise trouble. For example, I’ve found that our aphids prefer green lettuce, so I plant mostly red ones, and get an extra month or more of pickings before the aphids get to them. I avoid cabbage white caterpillars by planting my broccoli as early as I can in spring. By the time the caterpillars infest the plants, they’re almost done giving anyway.

2) Don’t be squeamish. You can do everything right and still sometimes be overrun by pests. Before you reach for a bottle of some toxic brew, take the time to squish some bugs. Aphids are easily crushed with a swipe of the fingers along a leaf. Beetles make a satisfying pop when squeezed (Don’t try it with slugs, though—ick!) It’s amazing how easily you can knock pests back by hand, especially if you catch the infestation early. I apply the same principle to my vertebrate pests—though it’s more gruesome for me dealing with the bodies, a quick death in a trap is more humane than a slow death by poison. Also, don’t be shy about killing your beloved plants. If one plant is covered in pests, and the others aren’t, sometimes the best thing you can do is sacrifice the infested plant before the pests spread.

3) Share. You learned it in kindergarten, and it’s just as important in the garden. You are growing delicious food, and others will want some too. Be prepared to give a little, and accept that you will have some pests. In Panama, the farmers understood this. They planted three seeds in each hole—one for God, one for the pests, and one for themselves.

The Smell of Summer

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DSC_0021 copyThis time of year can be stressful, with birthdays, a new school year, endless vegetables that need to be picked and processed, milking to be done, and cheese to be made. By 8pm each day, when I’m finally getting out to pick vegetables, I’m exhausted and grumpy.

But the corn is flowering, and all I have to do is inhale deeply that unmistakable fragrance to be transported back to my childhood, catching fireflies in my nightgown in the back yard on hot summer nights. Stress and fatigue fade with every breath. Life is good and I am at peace. I could stand there inhaling that memory of childhood summers for hours. In fact, I sometimes sneak out there with my morning coffee, just to stand in the middle of the corn, breathing. It is the smell of hot summer days and humid nights, skinned knees, grasshoppers and cicadas, and wild games of tag among the corn rows. It is the smell of freedom from school, schedules, and other obligations. It is the smell of childhood wonder and possibilities. With every breath, some of that wonder, some of those possibilities become real again.

Landscape Shaped by Food

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DSC_0007 smI’ve thought a lot about the Canterbury landscape over the past year. I’ve been piecing a quilt of the plains inspired by the September 4 2010 earthquake. The huge jog the quake created in the otherwise dead-straight Telegraph Road made me think about its effect on the aerial view of the entire area—all those straight fence lines and hedges shifted. It took a few years for the ideas to come together enough to execute, but last year I began to work on it. I took a satellite image of the area I wanted, projected it onto my living room wall, and traced the landscape onto a quilt-sized piece of paper. Every field was numbered and mapped on a reference sheet—six hundred and two pieces, each one different. Along the Greendale Fault, I cut and shifted the quilt, exaggerating the real break a bit, and creating a subtle disruption in the patterns.

Though the quilt began with a focus on the quake, as I worked on it, I thought more and more about the agricultural landscape itself. For over 100 years, sheep and grain have been the staples of the region. They have left their impression on the landscape. The wedges formed by intersecting roads at Charing Cross were sliced by straight fences and hedges, forming paddocks and fields for sheep, oats, and barley. Today, dairy cows and the centre pivot irrigators that keep the cows’ paddocks lush have overlaid circles on the straight lines of the past. You can see places where the centre pivot has obliterated the geometry of the past, and others where the straight lines limit or slash through the centre pivot. The push and pull of the past and the present.

Satellite photo of the real thing.

Satellite photo of the real thing.

This landscape has fed people for over 600 years. When the first Maori arrived, the native forest provided food like moa and pigeons. As the forests were felled, the region’s rivers and wetlands continued to provide abundant fish and waterfowl. When Europeans arrived in the 1870s, they brought livestock and crops, which thrived on the plains. Though the landscape has changed dramatically, the use we make of it remains. Today, this landscape of food feeds not only locals, but also people in far-flung places like China, Europe, and the Americas. No doubt the landscape will change in the future. New lines will erase the old. But chances are good the new lines will be shaped by food.

The Pickle Lady

/ Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments

dilled beans7 smWhenever I think of my great grandmother Sturgis, I think of pickles. Now, she died when I was just a young child, so I’m certain my memory of her is wildly inaccurate, so I offer my sincere apologies to anyone who knew her. What I remember about her is hundreds and hundreds of jars of pickles—way more than an elderly married couple ever needed or could possibly consume. I remember a basement lined with shelves laden with dusty jars of all types of pickle–chunks, bread and butter slices, whole sweet pickles, dill spears… I imagine her an avid gardener who just couldn’t bring herself to rip out those cucumber plants once she’d put up enough pickles for the year. I know the temptation. The cucumbers are there. Pickles are good. You wouldn’t want those cucumbers to go to waste, would you? Pretty soon, the pantry shelves are groaning under the weight of pickle jars, you’re buying vinegar by the case, and you’re sending every guest home with a selection of half a dozen types of pickle. Before you know it, you’re known as “The Pickle Lady”. Neighbourhood children sneak around the house, daring each other to peek through the windows for a glimpse of the reinforced steel shelving stacked with pickles. Guests feign cucumber allergies. Family members drop hints about obsessive compulsive disorders their “friends” have. Your husband threatens to move out unless you remove the stacks of pickle jars from the bedroom.

This is why I only plant pickling cucumbers every other year. I can easily make two years’ supply of pickles with one planting (and still have cucumbers left over for the neighbours who like to make their own pickles). And it reduces the risk of becoming The Pickle Lady.

Of course, other vegetables can be pickled…