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.