Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Nature's Capricious Kiss

Farming, I have concluded, is intrinsically a treasure hunt.  There are buried things already present there -- minerals, trace minerals, fungi, worms, bacteria and all manner of other life forms -- joined at some point by the seeds and transplants that you add to the mix.  With any luck -- and some careful tending -- it all translates into a totally new kind of treasure, buried or out there in full view that both nourishes and delights.

And this is the pirate season -- passing among the rows, pilfering the wealth that you may have nudged along but did not create.  The leaves and fruits are wondrous enough, and we have been consumed with pickling spices, brines, sterilizing, chopping, slicing, stewing, blanching, canning and freezing.  But recent days have literally taken us subterranean.  Yellowing foliage signaled an invitation to dig garlic -- all 120 feet of it.  We dug and pulled and gathered and ultimately arranged the stalks on tables in the barn in the drying breeze of two fans.  And then yesterday, before the rains commenced, a similar clue was offered among the potato rows.

There are eight rows of potatoes -- each about 15 feet long.  Unlike the garlic which, though indeed beneath the surface and out of sight, is nonetheless flagged by a stalk in a one-to-one ratio, potatoes are a true treasure hunt.  A single seed potato might produce a dozen potatoes.  Or not.  It isn't known until it's dug.  In years past I could have competed for the State Fair's "smallest potato" blue  ribbon.  Pea sized, a few marble sized and an ever so rare "real potato" the size of a golf ball, it was more the curiosity animated by sheer determination that intrigued me rather than the elusive harvest.  But I have kept trying -- better preparing the soil to nourish and loosen so that the tubers stood a better chance.  Yesterday was my first chance to see if gold was literally buried there.  Yukon Gold to be precise, and Red Thumb that had been planted in the last third of the row.  Stabbing a spade along the side of the row to break up the cover, I pulled faded stalks and ran fingers beneath the clods; exploring.

And struck it rich.  A five-gallon bucket filled with the Golds and half a bucket with the Reds now, like the garlic, spread before the fans to dry and cure a bit before sampling.  In the coming weeks we will see what might be excavated from the remaining rows, but just this one was satisfying delight.

And then, making one more pass among the tomato vines as the sky darkened and the drops began to fall, I found one more surprise -- a tomato anomaly; a mutant, I suppose, or a twin...or a heart shaped delight -- dangling there to impress upon me yet again that harvest is not a mechanized manufacture -- a designed and endlessly duplicated widget repetitively spit out of a machine -- but nature's whimsically capricious kiss.  And the best fruit of all...

...is the smile on my face as I lug the baskets and the buckets back to the kitchen.



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