A Much-Needed Taste of Spring

This past week, we enjoyed six glorious days of spring-like weather--yes, in February. Temperatures reached almost the mid-60s one day. I celebrated by pruning my blueberries and preparing their new home by tilling in the grass clippings and newspapers I put down in a long row in October. While the rest of my yard remained frozen from a late January cold snap, the covered bed cultivated beautifully. Not a shred of newspaper remained, and the tough sod beneath had broken down as well. This soil is some of the poorest in my yard, but it already looks pretty good. I sprinkled in some iron sulfate to lower the pH for acid-loving blueberries. I'll apply some mushroom soil either when I transplant the old bushes and plant the new ones, or as a top dressing after they're in the ground.

It felt good to get outside and breathe in the smell of freshly-turned earth. It felt good just to breathe deeply after another bout with illness, this time pneumonia which put me out of commission for most of January. I was winded and tired after my short gardening session, but my mood improved tremendously. Earlier in the week, I made my first foray outside into the newly warm weather out of necessity. Snow and ice just a week earlier had caused my PVC hoophouse to collapse. It was my own fault. If I'd only brushed the inch or so of snow off, the icy precipitation probably would have rolled right off. But I've gotten too used to keeping myself warm and rested inside the house.



The hoophouse is yet another experiment, one that has taken nearly two years to perfect--if in fact I've perfected it. In the fall of 2007, I purchased greenhouse film and created a framework out of 3/4-inch PVC pipe, using cross and T connectors. I placed a series of hoops over rebar driven into the ground, and connected them with sections of pipe at the top and sides. Last year's structure was high and wide, and did well during the mild winter until an early February snowstorm, which picked it up off the rebar and pulled it apart.

This year, I changed my design to make the hoophouse lower and wider, using my raised beds as the base. I purchased metal channels into which the greenhouse film is drawn tight, snapped in with a sturdy piece of wire. But a late November cold snap this year did in my lettuce and cilantro. I did manage to keep my basil alive for four weeks past the first frost, but it was already gone by the time temperature dipped into the twenties.

Part of the problem was the door. Last year, I covered both ends and then slit one in the middle, applying "industrial strength" sticky velcro to close it. It was a bit of a pain to get the velcro to line up, but it sealed well...at least until the first damp night. A little cold and a little moisture and that velcro never stuck again. For the rest of the hoophouse's short season, I used spring clamps to keep the sides together. It worked o.k., but what a pain it was to get in. This year, I covered the entire end and just left one side partially unattached, weighing it down with some old boards and a couple of bricks. What I didn't consider was that the film got incredibly muddy in the wet garden, so that every time I bent down to crawl through the two and a half foot opening I'd allowed myself, my entire back would get covered with mud. Once I tripped going in and ended up with mud all over my knees as well.


So with the hoophouse once more in need of reassembly, I decided to try something I'd seen driving by one of the local nurseries. I cut two two-by-fours to the height and angle of the end and attached them to the PVC using plastic ties. I screwed the bottom ends into the raised beds for stability. Then, I attached another two by four across to be the top of my doorway. The door is only about 3 1/2 feet high, only because the plywood I wanted to use as a door was behind about 30 other pieces of wood. I stapled the greenhouse film around the doorway securely, then placed the plywood over the opening and held it in place with a 1x2 which I slid into some U-brackets. When I want to get in, all I have to do is remove the 1x2 and lift the plywood aside. Wow, and it only took me two years to figure it out!

My son helped me patch the holes in the film with packing tape and then we went inside to check it out. He enjoyed tapping the top of the greenhouse to make it "rain" on me. I checked the thermometer. It was 90 degrees inside! I think I know where I'll be spending the rest of my winter. Inside, the carrots are small but doing fine. The spinach and lettuce is not growing, but it's alive. I'm already anticipating some very early greens this year. I'm also hopeful that the greenhouse will help me get an early start with my warm-weather vegetables like tomatoes and peppers.




It has been a particularly dark and dreary winter, but things are looking up. A few fifty-plus degree days got my blood pumping and warmed my heart. I pulled back some straw on Tuesday and dug up a beautiful bunch of carrots which I cut up and put into a pan with a roast beef. Any day now, I will place my spring order and get those first seedlings started under lights in the basement. And when those new blueberry bushes arrive, I'm ready for them.

Sweet Potatoes and Sickness

It was October 1970, just about two months before I was born. My grandfather had been bringing in his sweet potato crop, which required careful digging by hand so as not to pierce or bruise the tubers before they could be cured for storage; he would never think of using a tractor. Pop Pop Brannock was known for his sweet potatoes, and he even grew the tiny slips for planting and sold them to other farmers and growers. Mom recalls how gently, almost lovingly Pop Pop would brush the dirt off each sweet potato as he prepared them for curing.

The rest of the story I have pieced together over the years from brief comments made by my aunt and my mother. My grandfather is alternatively described as stubborn and domineering or soft-hearted and playful, a volatile drunk or a silly sipper of beer. My mother was 14 years younger than her sister. Personalities sometimes mellow over the years, so perhaps both descriptions are true. In any case, Pop Pop had been feeling poorly, but kept quiet about it because he had potatoes to dig. One day, the family came home from church and found dark drops of blood all over the kitchen. He'd had a stroke, but in typical fashion, he refused to go to the hospital and the ambulance driver couldn't take him by force. Pop Pop paced anxiously around the kitchen, unable to speak, blood dripping from his nose. Finally, his leg gave out and my aunt was able to force him to get in the car and she took him to the hospital in Cambridge. He never regained consciousness.

I never met my grandfather. On the day he went into the hospital, my mother was called, and she left in the middle of something. The kitchen timer had not yet gone off, and must have buzzed for hours before it finally just gave up. As a young

child, the broken timer was a reminder of the grandfather I never met. Pop Pop has remained a shadowy figure to me. Since he didn't like having his picture taken, there was only one photo of him in our family album--standing over his cold frame in the spring of 1967 with my older brother, Jim. Recently, my cousin unearthed a picture of my mother with both of her parents: tall, thin figures flanking her in the family graveyard next to their house. Mom cried when I gave her a framed enlargement of the image as a surprise two Christmases ago.

I can't imagine the fear and pain my grandfather must have felt as old age and his body betrayed him. Why did he resist getting treatment and instead chose to buzz dazedly--a bit like my mother's kitchen timer--until finally he had to give up too? The answer I imagine is that he was clinging to what he knew, what was predictable. The sweet potatoes had to be dug and if he could just get through this physical setback, he could get back to what needed to be done.



My last blog post was in October. Soon after I brought in my first-ever sweet potato crop, sickness hit my family again and again. Debilitated from severe back pain, my father had two spinal surgeries and has spent the last two months in recovery. My immediate family has suffered, in rapid succession, an anti-biotic resistant ear infection, gout, bronchitis, asthma and a nasty stomach virus. Just after Thanksgiving, I awoke in the middle of night with an upset stomach that somehow spiraled into anaphalaxis. I lay in bed--intensely itching, throat tightening, shaking because of my lowered blood pressure--and tried to control the panic, hoping the antihistamine would stop the reaction. I didn't want to shoot myself with epinephrine and go to the hospital. I'll have to wake everyone, there's so much to do before Christmas, I haven't pulled up the tomato plants, what about Joe's test...

I'm not kidding, this is what I was thinking--in between prayers. A long hour and a half later, the symptoms finally subsided and I fell asleep. My body betrayed me, but didn't give up. Perhaps now I have some insight into what my grandfather was thinking the day he died, as he lost control over his body. The work of harvesting, like all gardening, is a constant. Something to focus upon, a rhythm, a purpose when so much of life is really out of our control. Of course, it's folly to think we have control over our gardens either, with the vagaries of weather, rainfall and pestilence, but we gardeners like to control what we can.


Right now, I am choosing to delight in what I can't control in my garden. Somehow, despite losing one batch of sweet potato slips which succumbed to the cold and turned slimy before ever growing, I grew a half or dozen or more ENORMOUS sweet potatoes this year. The largest measured 13 inches long, 19 inches and diameter and weighed in at 6 pounds. The day I dug the last of the sweet potatoes (right after the first frost), I quickly uncovered several 4-pound potatoes. These are about 3 times the size of those you usually see in the grocery store. I found the prizewinner on my very last dig. I hollered to my family inside and they came out to gush and marvel and overall were suitably impressed. I called my mother to ask, "Is this normal?" I waylaid my Amish neighbor as she walked by in their adjacent field. "Ours were big this year," she noted, "but not that big." I bragged about my sweet potato to anyone who would listen. I researched giant sweet potatoes on the internet and learned the largest was 81 pounds!

On Christmas Eve, I brought my giant sweet potato up from the basement to show the whole family and to weigh it on my new digital scale. The result: 5 pounds, 15 ounces. No record there. Oh well, I'm going to eat mine not keep it to show off for 10 years anyway. On Thanksgiving, I made a double recipe of my sweet potato casserole from a single potato, and that wasn't even the biggest one. So there. No matter what, sweet potatoes are definitely on the list for this year's garden. Will I grow another whopper? I have no idea. It's out of my control.

"We Didn't Know There Was a Depression"

Ten years ago, I curated an exhibition exploring the impact of the Great Depression on Delaware farmers. Despite an overall downturn in crop prices that had impacted growers since the 1920s--long before the stock market crash--many rural people did not experience the bread lines of the cities, the despair of the Dust Bowl. As one woman who lived through the Depression as a child put it, "We didn't know there was a Depression." I thought this was surprising and thought-provoking, a great title for an exhibition. We announced in our newsletter that we'd received grant funding for the exhibit and the proposed title.

Soon after, I received an angry phone call from a woman I admired very much, a Quaker, a farmer, and the woman who had written THE book on Delaware Agricultural history. "How could you possibly say there was no Depression?" she chastised me. "Some poultry farmers may not have felt the Depression, but we certainly did." I brooded over her words for days, even though I had given considerable thought to the title and my director had approved it. I had no intention of trying to minimize the everyday struggles of farmers; on the contrary, I was trying to highlight their resourcefulness and self-sufficiency.

But I also understood her point. Even as prices for crops fell by almost half, in 1923 a new business opportunity began to boom in lower Delaware: broilers. In 1923, a farm wife named Cecile Steele accidentally received 500 chicks instead of the usual 50 for her home flock. She raised the chicks until they were "broiler" size and then sold them as meat to a local buyer for 62 cents a pound. By the early 1930s, the Steeles were raising over 200,000 birds a year and Delaware growers sold chickens year-round to Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Hatcheries, feed mills and by 1938 a processing plant sprung up to support the new industry. For those growing broilers, the Depression hit very softly. On the other hand, average farmers marketing field crops, fruits and vegetables were often cash-strapped, land poor and unable to invest in the technology or new crops that might have brought them more success.

The lady who said "We didn't know there was a Depression," however, was NOT the daughter of a poultry farmer. Her father was a truck farmer who sold fruits and vegetables at market and to the local cannery, and kept a herd of dairy cows for some "milk money." What she meant is that her family was insulated from the privations of economic strife such as not having enough to eat or having a place to live, because they owned their own modest farm and they had the ability to grow and preserve their own food. It is a story I've heard time and time again as I've continued to interview children of the Depression. Mildred Strong of Trumpington recalled that her mother gardened and canned, and bartered eggs for staple items at the store in Rock Hall. The milk money provided cash for taxes and some hired labor. They pinched pennies: "If I had a nickel, I thought I was rich," Mrs. Strong remembers.

I never heard much pain or regret in the voices of those I interviewed who struggled through the Depression. On the contrary, I heard pride. My parents were both born late in the Depression, my father to a poor family of 10 in coal-mining country and my mother to a family who lived on tenant farms until she was a small child. Nonetheless, they felt the legacy of the Depression and growing up poor and that was passed on to my brother and me. We scrimped and saved, gardened and canned, but generally had a much more comfortable existence than my grandparents'and parents' generation. My father rose from teller to bank vice president to elected County Treasurer. Dad schooled me in balancing my checkbook every month to the penny, how to make good money decisions and eventually how to land a good mortgage. Both my parents gave me lessons on thrift.

The spending excesses I've seen since I was a teenager have remained a mystery to me. The first time I asked for a pair of Jordache jeans, my mother sat me down and explained the family budget and why there was no money left for $60 designer jeans after the bills and food were paid for. I didn't like the answer, but I understood. (I also recall receiving designer jeans as my ONLY birthday present a year or so later.) But I must admit, when I say no to my own children's requests for video game systems and cell phones, I feel a pang of guilt. Every other child their age really does seem to have all those things. I've continued to resist, and now with the current economic crisis, I'm feeling pretty wise.

Commentators on TV say that good citizens like me who don't have credit card debt and pay their modest mortgages every month should be annoyed with those who have gotten in over their heads and lived beyond their means. I supposed I started to wonder myself, so I asked my Dad if he was annoyed. After years of dealing with bank customers who had plenty of money and wealthy homeowners who didn't think they should have to pay their property taxes, I must admit I thought he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about "rich people." I was wrong. "No, it doesn't annoy me," he responded so quickly I was a bit taken aback. "I wouldn't have lived any other way."

There it was. The same pride in self-sufficiency and living simply that I had seen in Depression-era farm kids. The difference is not so much in what people like my parents expect out of their lives as what they value in their lives. Our family was close, we loved each other and we worked together. We had food on the table, clothes on our backs and a place to live. There was even enough left over for a few family trips and to help my brother and I go to college. Today, my parents delight in giving things to us. Sometimes it makes me a little uncomfortable, even as I am grateful.

That's because I don't want my children to miss out on the lessons of the Depression, and to learn what they truly should value. Part of me hopes that our whole country is at a point where it will finally learn this lesson.

Image: "Harvest: Spring and Summer," mural by William D. White at the former Dover, DE post office, painted as part of the Treasury Relief Art Project in 1938.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde

And When She Looked There, The Cupboard Was NOT Bare...

Is there anything more beautiful than rows of canning jars, filled with the bright goodness of the growing season? Bright red tomatoes, deep purple grape juice, brilliant green pickles, all lined up and waiting to be enjoyed. Canning is far from over for me this year. It has been nearly a month since I've blogged, and I blame canning and the start of school. Things are supposed to be returning to a "normal" school and work routine for me, yet the work of preserving the harvest still awaits me.

Two weeks ago, my parents brought me a cooler full of grapes from their prolific vines. I managed to squeeze--literally--six quarts of my own grape juice "concentrate" from my struggling vineyard this year. For this I am grateful, since I had given them up as lost for yet another year mid-summer. Gray mold or some other fungal disease has begun to infect the clusters, and each grape after promising green Concord grape turned dark, not a sweet purple but a rotten brown. But as the bad grapes dropped to the ground, I diligently picked them up and pruned off infected clusters in an attempt to forestall a total crop loss. And I had some success. The first flush of grapes were large-ish and juicy, and I just had to pick out the infected ones. As the summer and the drought wore on, the grapes became smaller and much less juicy, but I used what I could.

Mom's grapes were fat and fragrant and I was able to get eight quarts of juice from those she brought me. In fact, I revisited my childhood (as characterized in my last blog) this Labor Day, as Mom and Dad and I sat on my deck with trays full of washed grapes, picking out the good ones and tossing them into a large stockpot. My brother came out, took one look at us, and pulled up an obligatory seat to the party. The tedious job took about a half an hour; it would have taken me at least 4 times that alone. The juice tasted that much sweeter.

This year, in an attempt to keep the heat from boiling water for hours on end out of the kitchen, I invested in a "patio stove." Basically, it's a 16 x 16 inch steel frame with a burner, attached to a medium-sized propane tank. Apparently, people use it to cook enormous batches of gumbo and to fry turkeys--well, we've all heard how turkey-frying usually goes. The number of precautions and warning went on for two pages. Nonetheless, my husband helped me hook it up in the shade of a tree and I was able to boil water to scald the skins off the tomatoes and then set the 5 gallon pot to process the jars on to boil while I peeled. The water boiled in record time and I was cool (well cool-er) in my kitchen.

I'm canning more quarts than pints of tomatoes this year, and opened up two boxes of hand-me-down quart jars from a friend who owns a gift shops. She frequents yard sales and discount stores and going out of business sales in search of amazing bargains. I had a good time pulling out the jars she'd given me, all of varying ages. I know none of them are old to the point of being valuable, but they recall a time when you could find more than one style of canning jar at the local store: Kerr Self-Sealing Mason, Atlas Mason, Ball Mason and one simple "Mason" with an anchor design embossed on it. My mother still has some old blue canning jars around the house, including some with the glass lid that clamps down, which she displays but no longer uses. As a historian but not a collector, I appreciate objects like canning jars for their simplicity and their functionality, particularly when they change very little after over 100 years. I found a nice summary of the history of the canning jar at pickyourown.org.

The Delmarva Peninsula was once populated by canneries from one end to the other. The cannery provided seasonal work for farmers and laborers alike. Sixty years ago, my grandfather was manager of the cannery in Church Creek for several months out of the year, his one source of steady, guaranteed income. My mother recalls that in those early years, they canned in tin cans at home as well, and she sometimes helped to crimp on the lids. As a child, I vaguely remember visiting the cannery during its last years in operation. They were canning pork and beans for Campbell's; my only memory is that I thought it was funny that they dropped only one small piece of pork or bacon into the can before sealing it up. I don't remember hearing anything about how critical the canneries had been to the local economy, and how their decline spelled the end of an era when produce was both grown and processed on the Eastern Shore. That was thirty years ago. Perhaps the stories I've heard about the cannery, along with our family tradition of growing and canning food at home, are what lead me to continue home canning year after year.
(Workers at the Kent Packing Co. in Rock Hall)

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde

(No) Time For Canning

When I was eight, I held a position of honor in my family, particularly in the late summer. My hands were just small enough to shove a tomato all the way through the top of a regular-mouth canning jar. "Can Jenifer come down and help me can tomatoes?" my grandmother would call up and ask. I felt honored by this special position for about one season. After that, whenever I was "invited" to come canning I would wryly remark, "Yeah, my hands are small, I know."

I spent untold summer hours as a child at our kitchen table, a cake pan full of tomatoes and rows of empty jars in front of me. My much older brother and Dad served peeling duty as well, while my mother blanched old pillowcases full of tomatoes to remove their skins. Mom would regularly dump our tomato skins in the compost bucket and return full pans of steaming-hot tomatoes to be peeled. My hands would wrinkle and bleach clean from the acidity, except for my fingernails which had slivers of reddish black gunk under them. So why is it I look back on those days with such fondness? It must have been the family togetherness, the silliness we all shared, especially when a juicy tomato would squirt someone else in the face or a tomato would pop out of its skin onto the floor. It was a difficult job, but working together made it go more quickly.

Last night, I canned this year's first batch of tomatoes...alone. The kids are certainly old enough to help, but I tend to can late at night, when boiling a pot of water for hours on end doesn't make my non-air conditioned house totally unbearable. In 2006, I had such a bumper crop that I didn't can any tomatoes the following year. Now, my shelf is nearly bare and I'm longing to fill it with rows of bright, beautiful tomatoes. I didn't finish until midnight, and I'm feeling drained today. My mother used to put in batch after batch until well into the early morning, setting the timer and waking up every 45 minutes to take out the hot jars and put new ones in. No doubt about it, canning is hard work and you have to keep your mind on the reward that come from opening a jar in winter and eating a tomato that tastes almost as good a fresh one in August.

There was a time not so long ago, when everyone was busy canning this time of year. As committed as I am to growing and putting up my own food, though, I find it difficult to find the time. It was nearly dark two nights ago, when my Amish neighbor stopped by and said hello. I was digging the last few potato plants up, and she was carrying a basket with 15 bags of corn for the freezer. She looked a bit tired too. "It's a busy time of year," she said, smiling sympathetically. Leaning on my garden fork, I nodded in agreement, then related what I had put up so far this year, and talked about my crop successes and failures. It felt good to share with her, like it always does with my mother, because I know she understands that the work brings great rewards. "Don't work too hard," she said in parting. "I won't," I fibbed.

Nothing can compare to the feeling you get when that first very cool, crisp autumn day comes and you know you have a full freezer and shelves full of canned goods. I imagine I might be cooking up some applesauce, and decide to pull out a bag of June strawberries to sweeten the sauce. Or I might thaw some peaches for a cobbler to go with the beef roast simmering in a pot with onion and carrots from the basement and a jar of tomatoes from the pantry. After dinner, we might bundle up to take a short hike down to the river or start a bonfire in the backyard, our bellies full.

On late summer days, if I've spent several hours on my feet at the kitchen counter, I fall into bed exhausted, with back and legs aching and a feeling of great satisfaction. I've always been known as a planner, someone who looks ahead, prepares or perhaps over-prepares. I wonder if it has something to do with my rural upbringing, and learning to live each day connected to the growing season. Or,is it just me? Either way, I know that all the time I've invested since I first placed that seed order in February is finally coming to fruition, and I'd better find the time to preserve it now so I have something to show for my labors.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde

Pork and Peaches

It felt like another adventure last Thursday as the kids and I set out in our truck for Conowingo, 45 minutes plus away at the far end of Cecil County, almost to the Pennsylvania line. I was off to pick up four large boxes of pork products from a locally-produced pig, which our family and three others had decided to share. We have purchased local beef several times before, and our most recent grass-fed meat from Rumbleway Farm had been the best yet. We don't eat quite as much pork, but the thought of some local scrapple, bacon and sausage was too tempting to pass up. My favorite quote about scrapple is on my 1st State Stories website: "The old saying is scrapple is made of seven different kinds of meat, all of them fit to eat."

Rumbleway uses Haas Butcher shop near Dover, Delaware, a family-owned operation that has been in business since 1955. There are not many local butchers left on Delmarva, and even fewer slaughter houses, but Haas is one that seems to be highly-regarded. To me, butchering is one of those skills that is passing away too quickly. With all of the concern about factory farms, I think we need to support and preserve the skills of the local butcher. I'm only half-joking to my husband when I say the knife skills he learned as a chef may come in handy some day. (Photo of scrapple making at the Family Butcher in Delaware)

Taken from another perspective, however, the decline of local butchers seems to directly correlate with our society's disconnect with where our meat comes from, and the fact that it once lived and breathed. In the New York Times last week, a columnist who forthrightly stated he was no vegetarian but he felt it was important for him to know his meat was humanely raised and killed before it made it to his plate, was both congratulated and vilified as a hypocrite in comments. I have never considered becoming a vegetarian and respect those who make that choice. Yet, I too want to find meat that has been produced without harming the environment,and without cruelty to the animal.

It makes all the difference for me to know how the animal lived and died. Does it make death pretty? No, but the awareness the death of animals for food used to be part of daily life everywhere in this country. On Delmarva for many generations, every fall brought family and community together for essential hard work. The animals were not treated more poorly then; on the contrary, I would say nearly all beef and pork in the late 1800s (and much more recently in some areas) was natural, grass-fed, and probably organic. The livestock were well-cared for because they were essential for the family's survival. It was only when the slaughter process moved away from the farm and the household that it became unfeeling, inhumane, and eventually unhealthful. Taking a hand in the birth, life and death of animals on the farm engendered a respect for the sacrifice God's creatures were making. That is one of the reasons I am working toward raising my own chickens, so I can truly understand that process and expose my children to it as well.

In any case, I was EXCITED about going to pick up my four large boxes of pork, but in the name of gas conservation and making full use of a trip to the other end of the county, I looked at Spring Valley Farm's ripe report to see if they had pick-your-own peaches. I had hoped to go blueberry picking earlier in the month, but just couldn't justify driving the distance. I discovered both white and yellow freestone peaches were ready, and set off with a wooden half-bushel basket and a wooden crate. My containers, it turned out, were largely unsuitable. The knowledgeable lady at the stand said the wooden crate was too heavy and I could only place peaches two deep in the basket. She gave me some useful, but less nostalgic, waxed cardboard flats.

As the kids and I followed the signs to the trees that were at their peak of ripeness, I flashed back to trips to a peach orchard with my mother and my brother when I was a kid. We always brought wooden baskets and I think our own ladder. I recall being chewed pretty thoroughly by some lower Shore mosquitos and developing an itchy rash on my forearms from the peach fuzz. Picking couldn't have been better on this day, however, with temperature in the mid-80s, fairly low humidity and not a mosquito in sight.

I had asked the Quaker woman who was one of the farm's owners whether the white peaches were better than the yellow. "Find a ripe one and taste it," she generously suggested. The white peaches were large and abundant, so we took 5 minutes to survey the orchard and find one that was perfectly ripe. I dusted it off on my shirt a little gingerly ("you can't grow peaches organically," the owner had told me) and bravely took a bite. It was like I'd never tasted a real peach before, as the sweet smell and taste collided. I beckoned the kids over and they each tried it and gushed over the deliciousness. Of course, we had to try a yellow one for comparison. Very tasty also, but the white were superior in my opinion.

I knew ahead of time that I had to control my picking. My second memory of peach-picking with my mother is that she often bit off more than she could chew, and picked so many peaches that she would be tied to the kitchen counter for the next week, peeling and pitting peaches to can and freeze. Upon arrival home, she would spread the peaches out on old canvas paint tarps on our front porch under the ping pong table, taking up about half of the porch. But eating her peaches in winter... oh, I can't even buy a canned peach in the store and forget one of those baseballs they sell in February. Mom shared some of last summer's peaches with us this past Father's Day over some angel food cake. I think that's when the burning desire to put up my own peaches started anew.

The peaches were a dollar a pound. Is that a good price? It sounded like a lot, when you're used to harvesting produce for free from your own garden. But the smell of the peaches, the sight of my children picking without being asked and my daughter's face dripping with peach juice was just too...intoxicating. After the weigh-in, the total was $72. I didn't really go overboard, did I? (Telling the story later, I related how I drove home with a whole pig and 50 pounds of peaches. "72 pounds," my daughter reminded me. "How much were the peaches?" my husband asked when he got home. "$70!" I exclaimed. "72 dollars," my daughter repeated. I think she understands me.)

With warnings from the orchardist to carry my peaches home in the front of the truck and to spread them out immediately upon getting home, we headed to Rumbleway to pick up the pork. Although the farm raises its own beef and chickens, the pigs actually come from a farm near my childhood home in Dorchester County, still local but considered natural rather than organic. The biggest challenge for most of the farmers seems to be finding certified organic grain. Pigs are almost always finished with grain, whereas beef can finish on grass. So while the pork is not organic, I still know what I am getting.

While the kids spent some time with the chickens in the barn, I asked to see where they processed their poultry. It was small, but efficient-looking. My idea of plucking and eviscerating under the maple tree in my backyard seems a little rustic in comparison. I asked if I could help with the processing next spring so I could learn how to do it, and they said absolutely, as if it were a most ordinary request. And then we were off, 150 pounds of thawing pork in the bed of the truck and 70 pounds (72 pounds, Mom) of delicate peaches in the front and the kids in the jump seats in the back. On the way home, I made my weekly stop at Locust Point Farm to pick up organic milk in glass bottles. All in all, a good day for a locavore.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde

Summer is for Sharing

For me, one of the greatest joys of my garden successes is being able to share my surplus produce with visitors and friends. There's nothing I hate more than wasting a bountiful harvest, and nothing I love more than to take folks on a short walk around the garden and prove to them that I am accomplishing something even though I don't go off to a full-time job every day. Often, I receive something from their garden in return. My neighbor appeared at dusk one evening this week with two quarts of blackberries she had just picked (mine are still recovering from their late-winter move). Those berries, along with those my Mom gave me the week before, cooked up into a nice batch of blackberry jam.

Recently, onions have been at the top of my give-away list. I planted 75 plants each of Walla Walla (mild, sweet), Red Burgermaster (mild, red) and Copra (storage) and 25 Pikant shallot sets at the end of March. I was harvesting green onions in May and by mid-June, I had so many large onions that I began to worry how I would every use them all. Only one variety was for storage...what if they rotted before I could use them? A horrifying thought. So for the last several weeks, every visitor to my house goes home with at least one onion whether they like it or not, although the Mom of one of my son's friends is actually allergic to onions, so I had to let her off the hook. I have researched long-term storage of onions in baskets or bags on my basement steps, and am hopeful it will work. Can you image the smell emanating from a couple hundred onions decaying in your basement?

The problem with giving away vegetables--squash or tomatoes, for example--is that when you have plenty, so does everyone else. That's why it has been so much fun to share some of the summer crisp lettuce I grew for the first time this year. Whenever my Black-seeded Simpson lasted until June, I always felt grateful, but lettuce in late July is truly a miracle. Thanks to an article in Organic Gardening, I learned about this heat-tolerant variety just this year. I planted it in mid-May before the soil temperatures were too warm and by the time it was ready to begin harvesting in early June, the mesclun mix I planted three weeks earlier had bolted before I'd cut enough for three salads. My Nevada (green) and Magenta (red) summercrisp came from Johnny's Selected seeds.

I am enjoying the usual rush of cucumbers, and although I have given a few away we have had cucumbers almost every night for a couple of weeks. Earlier this week, I made a chilled cucumber soup. This was not the usual fresh puree I've made before, but a recipe which called for sauteing the cucumbers with onions in butter, then cooking them in broth for a half an hour. The mixture is then pureed and chilled. Creme fraiche was supposed to finish off the soup, but I added a cup of organic half and half that I've been trying to use up and then served it with a dollop of sour cream. Some people give me funny looks when I talk about chilled soup, but personally I crave it during the heat of the summer. See recipe below.

I derive great pleasure from making dishes for our weekend family "potluck" dinners at my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's cottage on the Bohemia River. We gather most Saturdays (and some Sundays too) for kayaking, sailing, swimming and--most importantly--eating. Not too long ago, our menu boasted grilled beef tenderloin, tuna, mahi mahi,lamb and pulled pork, all in one meal. I should probably mention that both my husband and my brother-in-law are former chefs, my sister-in-law works for a food broker and I am the self-appointed baker and produce-provider by virtue of being part of a long line of talented Eastern Shore gardeners and cooks.

Despite the extra work it takes to cook with home-grown fruits and vegetables, I have to admit it really is a selfish act. My husband's family always indulges me with compliments. "Did those ______ really come from your garden?" gives me even more pleasure than "That ______ tastes so good." So, this weekend, the family might expect some chilled cucumber soup, a blueberry buckle from the last of my berries, or some homemade fries from largest of my new potato crop, and most definitely some hand-battered onion rings...



Chilled Cucumber Soup

1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 cup chopped onions
4 cucumbers, peeled, halved, seeded, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices (about 5 cups)
1 8-ounce russet potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 1/2 cups low-salt chicken broth
3 large fresh dill sprigs plus 6 tablespoons minced fresh dill
1 teaspoon (or more) salt
1 cup half and half
Sour cream (for serving)

Melt butter in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add onions and sauté until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add cucumbers and potato; stir 1 minute. Add broth, dill sprigs, and 1 teaspoon salt. Increase heat and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer until cucumbers and potato are tender, stirring occasionally, about 25 minutes. Working in batches, puree soup in processor until smooth. Return to pot. Cool 15-30 minutes. Whisk in half and half and 4 tablespoons minced dill. Cover and chill until cold, about 4 hours. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled.) Taste soup, adding more salt if desired. Ladle soup into 6 bowls. Place dollop of sour cream in center of each bowl; sprinkle with minced dill. (Modified from recipe on Epicurious.com)


© 2008 Jenifer Dolde