Firsts and lasts

This is the season of "firsts" and "lasts." Nearly every day, we have our first of something. Saturday, it was the first bitter dandelion greens and licorice-like sweet cicely in our 14-ingredient salad (along with the mustard, mache, claytonia, minutina, lettuce, spinach, arugula, radish, and beet leaves from the hoop house that we've been eating for months, and the primrose, viola flowers and chives from the garden that we began eating last week). We also shared the last jar of frozen peaches, which still tasted just like summer.

Sweet cicely: The edible leaves and seed pods of this

shade-happy perennial taste like licorice

Edible primrose flowers also love shade

The chives are coming up so fast we can almost see them grow

Tonight, dinner was a pureed potato-leek-chard-sorrel soup, a recipe I found in my "Healthy Slow Cooker" cookbook, and one worth making again. I had dug the last overwintered leeks from the garden (protected by straw) a few weeks ago. The chard was the last of leafy greens from the freezer. The vegetable stock was also the last jar. The sorrel, on the other hand, is just coming into its own in the herb bed outside the south-facing kitchen door. Each year, we have talked about using more of it; I was glad to find a simple recipe perfect for these still-chilly spring evenings that used fresh food at its peak. For dessert, we ate the last container of rhubarb-strawberry compote. I also finished the last handful of blueberries at breakfast.

Young lemony sorrel

The large chest freezer in our "mud room" is now almost empty; the last two bags of pole beans, packages of meat, and a few odds and ends all fit in the small kitchen freezer above the frig. There's something satisfying about finishing off the treats of last season, just as this year's crops are ready to pick. It signals a clear cycle that is often lost in what Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) called the U.S.'s "promiscuous, anything anytime" food culture. There will be more blueberries, strawberries, and peaches all in their time, and not too far off either. But first, we have the sorrel, and dandelion greens and sweet cicely to savor.

Gifts

Spring green: moss growing on a log in the woods

This was a weekend of finding and sharing gifts. Richard and I wandered through the woods this morning, celebrating signs of spring growth and more evidence that the pileated woodpeckers (one breeding pair, more?) are here and apparently thriving.

Another pileated woodpecker hole

During these walks, Richard checks on the growth of the hickories, cherries and other trees that he is coming to know well. He points out to me those that have died, which he plans to turn into next winter's heating wood, and the live ones to be culled (also destined for heating wood) so that others nearby can flourish.

Fungi growing on a log

It is easy during these walks to be aware that we are part of a larger system, and that our health and well-being depends on its health and well-being. Food, heat, clothing, shelter -- all take time and labor to produce. But mostly, in our society, that time and labor is generally invisible to those of us who merely consume these products. That leaves us without the information that could help us more easily make sustainable choices about what and how much to consume. As I watch the time it takes for a tree to grow, and see the labor it takes to fell and split the wood, It is easier to remember what is required to enable us to warm the house in the coldest months. It is no longer invisible or taken for granted.

Last year's logs stocked to dry for next winter's heat.

So, too, with the growing of food. There is a different appreciation when I sit to eat a plate of braised greens that I've tended and helped to grow. There is abundance in our yard, but it is not abundance that I am drawn to overeat. That is reserved for products I merely consume, where the time, labor and "inputs" required to produce them remains invisible to me.

The food we produce ourselves seems to me always a gift, and like all gifts, it easiest to enjoy in moderate amounts, and when it is shared with others. By now, the hoop house salad greens are growing faster than we can eat them. Yesterday, I prepared a large salad to take to my synagogue yesterday for Shabbat lunch. This afternoon, I picked more of the hoop house bounty and walked up the road, dropping off bags of early spring salad greens with the neighbors. A chance to say "hello" and share these gifts.