Late November

As we reach the fourth week of November, we have so much abundance to be thankful for: an ever-growing circle of friends, families (perhaps further away than we’d wished, but there), a home filled with love. And then there’s the continuing abundance of food produced by the land on which we live.

Last Saturday, several friends came to dinner. We roasted one of the pumpkins, and served it mashed and sweetened with maple syrup, along with a fresh-picked salad. Stored potatoes, fresh dug carrots, and frozen green beans went into the pot roast. The toasted pumpkin seeds made a wonderful dessert (along with the chocolate that Alicia brought and the Girl Scout cookies I bought from Michelle and Nina).

Sunday, I dug some of the Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) to bring to my sister. A member of the sunflower family, this late-blooming, spreading perennial bears its yellow flowers in late October. It’s knobby, homely looking tubers – sweeter after several frosts – can be cooked like potatoes.

Last night, I took out the horseradish roots I dug earlier in the fall. Like the sunchokes, they are not much to look at. But they make a wonderful grated horseradish preserve that my dad -- and we -- love. Richard scrubbed; I grated. We haven’t tasted it yet, but inhaling near the food processor sent a fiery rush through my nasal passages and tears to my eyes. And I was worried that holding them in the frig for so long had weakened their taste!

This morning, before we pack the car, I will pick fresh salad greens for my niece, Dori, and parsley, sage, winter savory and thyme for my mom.

Along with thankfulness, food, friends and family, however, late November brings Thanksgiving, a complicated holiday, made ever more complex as we continue to learn to separate the rosy myths that surround it from clearer-eyed looks at the arrival of the English colonists to this continent. One excellent version, 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, offers a more complete look at this history. So does the "The Real Story of Thanksgiving."

The challenge is that what most people in the U.S. learned about Thanksgiving is a mix of both history and myth. The relationship between the Europeans and the Native people in fact included at least one shared feast and some ongoing diplomacy. The early English settlers first survived only because of the generosity and help from Native people knew how to live on this land. However relationship between the two groups also was characterized by European kidnappings of hundreds of Native people taken to Europe as “novelties” and slaves, the repeated stealing of Native food stores, the privatization of collectively-shared land, massacres, policies of genocide and forced removal. Many of the first "thanksgivings" observed by the English settlers were actually "victory" celebrations after massacres of the "heathen savages." Within a generation there was a state of ongoing war between the two peoples. It is a painful story that many of European descent struggle to attend to.

The part of New York State where we live was – and still is – home to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. So even as we love and tend this plot of land on which we live, we must grapple with the painful awareness of who else loved and tended it before us, what happened to them and why. There are no simple answers for rectifying historic wrongs. But there is the obligation to continue to question how those of us who live here now, enjoying the harvests of this place, are should respond to horrific injustices we didn’t create, but of whose histories we are now a part.

Creativity and Connection

I love things that are simultaneously functional, beautiful, sustainable, and help remind us of our connection to the world around us (both human and natural). In fact, for me, an object's beauty usually comes from its intersection with those other three attributes. That's the basis for our foray into edible landscapes. Thus, I was thrilled when, late last week, Richard sent me an inspiring New York Times article (11/4/09) about Roald Gundersen, a Wisconsin forester, architect and builder who creates passive solar homes, greenhouses, commercial buildings, and other structures from whole trees, rather than from milled lumber. 

I learned that building with a whole, unmilled tree is more frugal, more sustainable and can support 50 percent more weight than largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree. The brief online slide show accompanying the article led me to look up Gundersen's firm, Whole Trees Architecture and Construction, and blog (see The Log Blog, in blog list at right). Turns out that building with whole trees is also exquisitely beautiful, leading to human shelters that resonate with connections to the natural world.  Gundersen's wife and business partner, Amelia Baxter, a former urban farmer, community organizer and co-owner of the firm, manages a community forest project modeled after community-supported agriculture. Members can harvest firewood, foods like mushrooms and watercress, and building trees from the woods in ways that sustain forests them as living resources, rather than as raw material to be extracted and used up. 

The Whole Trees web site also offers a cool "tree word of the day." The day I looked it was "thigmomorphogenesis," which, I learned, refers to a tree's ability to strengthen in response to tactile stimuli (e.g., wind blowing against a trunk). 

 

In the past two years, we have been more actively managing the 6 wooded acres surrounding our house, selectively culling some trees so that others have a better chance to grow. Gundersen's work has me looking at the dead elm, small-diameter ash, and occasional cherry trees we have been taking down in new ways, thinking about what we might build next. 

A Warm Weekend

I enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather this weekend, even as I know it can’t be good for the plants that are blooming out of season. There were several flowers on the primroses last week (above), and I saw a flower and many blossoms on one of the strawberries as well.

I used the sunny weather to advantage, however: mulching, dividing and moving some hostas, and working on the flagstone paths. Richard composted the horse and alpaca manure that our neighbors dropped off, worked on strengthening the deer fence and put markers along the edge of the new driveway.

Moving the driveway into the woods was partly practical; it will allow us to construct a large, walk-in hoop house next year on the straight stretch in front of the house – the area with the longest hours of winter sun – that was the previous driveway. But it’s lovely driving into the woods as we arrive home; and it’s wonderful to sit in the garden without looking at the cars (now hidden from view behind the wood pile).

A complete change in perspective, with only a few extra feet to walk between the cars and the front door.

After harvesting a large bowl of parsley (which went into a batch of tabouli for lunch), I dug up four parsley plants, potted them and brought them into the kitchen. Several small dill plants that started to grow late summer from the first crop’s seeds, will follow as soon as I get another bag of potting soil. Along with the rosemary, brought in before the first frosts, they will be right on hand to season soups and stews.

Finally, the warm weather meant that we opened up the low hoop houses, making it easy to admire the hardy greens that are continuing to grow, as well as to weed and harvest. Tonight’s salad included several mustards, savoy (an Asian green not unlike spinach, pictured left), Mizoona (another Asian green), magenta beet leaves, radish, carrot, calendula petals, and viola blossoms. I also pulled a leek and dug up some Jerusalem artichokes. They went into a frittata, along with some stored potatoes and the rest of the harvested parsley. Dinner was, Richard said, “gourmet.”

More fall colors

One benefit of this summer's rain has been the particularly splendid show of colors this fall. For weeks now, the trees have been adorned in vibrant yellows, fiery reds and warm oranges that call out for attention in the midst of an over-busy life. They remind me to leave my desk and computer screen, even if only for short walks around the neighborhood outside my office.

This week, there are still trees to admire as I drive down into Ithaca. Out our way, though, most of the deciduous leaves have dropped, nearly all blown down by Friday night's strong winds. But last week's photos of the American filbert (above) and blueberry (right) -- both planted in the north beds we added this summer -- prolong the memory. These native shrubs would be worth growing just for the fruit and nuts they will eventually produce; in the meantime, we savor the color they add to the landscape.

The small plant with the red berries, behind the blueberry, is a lingonberry, an edible fruit-bearing evergreen ground cover native to Scandinavia. Cousin to the American cranberry, it favors the same acidic soil conditions as the blueberries, making for a wonderful pairing. I put in a dozen small plants this year; eventually they will spread to cover the ground between the blueberries bushes. Surprisingly, even as we pick the tart ripe berries, new flowers are continuing to bloom.

And then there are the mums and dwarf barberry right outside our front door. Just reaching their peak, they still welcome us -- outside and in -- with color on even the greyest of days.

New Rhythms

The first frosts have come, and in the past several weeks, we have hurriedly gathered the last of the pole beans, basil, and some heirloom cherry tomatoes that proved surprisingly resistant to the late blight. We stored the squash, garlic and potatoes; replanted next season’s garlic; cleared debris from spent beds; and began to mulch the berries and fruit trees. We gauged the remaining chard, kale, and sorrel, whose leaves withstand even the early killing frosts; enjoyed the resurgence of arugala which has reseeded itself throughout the garden (and garden paths); and knew that the cabbage, leeks and carrots could be left in the ground to harvest as needed over the coming months. These are familiar rhythms to gardeners and farmers in the Northeast U.S.

But for us this year, some of the rhythms of this transitional season are new.

This fall, we are also evoking rituals of spring, tending young greens – planted in late August and early September – and watching them thrive in these cooler days. Some of the crops are familiar, others are as new as the rhythms of planting, weeding, and thinning at a time when most of the garden is heading toward dormancy. There’s spinach, beets, mâche, claytonia, radishes, mustards, raddichio, a mesclun mix, and a variety of Asian greens.

The photos (from top to bottom): late summer-planted Vitamin Green and Pac Choi surrounded by marigolds, before last week's killing frost; fall-planted Hon Tsai Tai, Savoy, and radishes; claytonia ("miners' lettuce"); self-seeded Asian "spoon greens"; and an early summer planting of spicy mustards that is continuing to produce new leaves. Some of those greens made a wonderful stir fry earlier in the week (along with some bright orange calendula petals) and a crisp, tangy salad last night.

Our goal is to eventually have freshly harvested greens throughout the entire year. Our guide: the writings of Eliot Coleman, an inspiring farmer, researcher, writer and local foods activist from Harborside, Maine. The author of (most recently) The Winter Harvest Handbook, Coleman profitably brings vegetables to market year-round from his zone 5 Four Season Farm using unheated, plastic-covered “hoop houses.” His success challenges the myth that we must ship food 3,000 miles across the U.S. because northeast winters preclude year-round vegetable production.

While “fall gardens” – vegetables planted in mid- to late-summer for fall harvest – are an old, if relatively lost, North American tradition, Coleman’s work opens the possibilities of extending that harvest into the frigid, snowy months by selecting cold-tolerant crops and providing minimal protection. One version of this protection, low “hoop houses” – plastic secured over small wire hoops – is quick and inexpensive to erect. We put them up a couple weeks ago when night-time temperatures began to frequently drop below freezing.

Next year, we will replace them with a “walk-in” structure – a hoop-framed greenhouse -- still unheated, but significantly larger and easier to access.

We’ve made only a small start this year, still acclimating ourselves to these unexpected rhythms. But we hope to have fresh salads and stir-fries into the new year. I’ll write more about what we’re growing and how it’s doing as this new gardening season unfolds.

A Blue-Spotted Salamander Visits

Rock piles, logs, leaf litter and underbrush provide ideal shelter for a variety of insect-eating reptiles, our partners in pest control. I found this burrowing Blue-Spotted Salamander in our garden last week while extending one of the flagstone paths through the front gardens. Richard had left a small pile of flat stones for me, on top of what had been the potato bed. When I lifted the sun-warmed rocks to lay them on the path, he (or she) scurried out.

While these salamanders live on land, they rely on vernal (seasonal) pools that retain water into mid-summer for breeding. So they are primarily found in moist forests and swampy woodlands where shady depressions collect and hold water well after the spring melt. Given this summer's rain everywhere is moist and swampy. But our "muddle" -- the hole we've dug in heavy clay soil that will eventually be a small woodland pond, along with our shift from large expanses of lawn to a more diverse ecosystem -- is clearly attracting larger numbers of reptiles to take up residence in our garden.

Warm Oranges for Cooler Days

Fortunately, my garden has not been as neglected as my blog. These fall days are busy – the late summer lull at work ends with a rush of new programming and grant deadlines. Meetings seem to sprout in my calendar as fast as weeds. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur -- the Jewish new year holidays -- are most welcome, interrupting the pace with time for reflection and appreciation, but they also fill several days. And then there are the garden projects: the shorter days remind us that whatever we hope to finish before winter needs to be done now.

Richard is chopping wood as I write. Earlier, we enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather as we worked on some new paths, moved a few shrubs, planted garlic, weeded and mulched, and got the plants still sitting in pots into the ground so they can settle before winter. In between tasks, there were still green beans, nasturtium blossoms, fall raspberries to nibble as we passed. Most years, we would have had a killing frost before the end of September, but the very rainy weather has kept night-time temperatures above freezing.

In the photos I have been taking, there are warm oranges everywhere: Red Gem marigolds (above) with their petite edible flowers, and calendula (right), whose petals can be added to rice, soups and salad, providing the color of saffron and a tangy, slightly sweet flavor, sprawl through the garden.

The Hopi squash is a rare heirloom that we grew for the first time this summer. 

It is similar to pumpkin in texture and taste. Paired with some just-harvested onions, garlic and leeks, and roasted, it made a wonderful soup last week. 

We ate it with a raw cabbage salad (a mini, tender "Caraflex" cabbage marinated in a olive oil and lemon juice), perfect for a cold, rainy evening. 

The pumpkins, on the other hand, are still ripening; they should be ready in another few weeks. Earlier today, my mom asked for some roasted pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving so we’ll store them until then.