Green Wizardries, Quiet Desperation by Maxine Rogers
Harvest is upon us! This is the busiest time of year for any gardener or farmer. Gardeners have a cascade of green beans, figs, tomatoes, apples, some lucky ones have plums and pears to deal with too. The onions have to be lifted and cured; the potatoes the same.
I spent yesterday blanching and freezing one cauliflower. It was one of the largest I have ever grown. I ended up with a large baking tray heaped up with cauliflower florets. Then, we went on to canning tomatoes. My husband went out with a large, strongly-built basket and came back with it overflowing with tomatoes. We chopped the beautiful, fully vine-ripened tomatoes up and cooked them quickly and then poured them into clean and warmed glass quart jars and popped them into the water-bath canner. Then, we had 45 minutes to do other things so we went and watered and fertilized greenhouses and garden beds.
This is normal for us so we don’t get too excited. We are, however, getting older and cannot accomplish so much each day as we used to. My sister and brother in law visited recently and helped us with project work such as summer pruning the apple trees and thinning the apple crop. They also helped on a construction project so I fed them like royalty and sent them home with many farm presents.
What we really need to do is to cut back on farming and gardening but we have to think how much we can afford to cut back. I am always amazed at how little I buy at the grocery store and how extraordinarily expensive it is. We don’t really buy food there, just coffee and soap and such, so I wonder how people without a garden and farm can manage at all.
I am sure a lot of people around here think they will always be able to afford a good diet purchased from grocery stores but I did notice the last time I went grocery shopping that the store had many fewer products for sale. Seems odd to me but shipping around the world is much impacted by the drought in Panama which has interfered with shipping. They need a lot of fresh water in the canals to float the really big boats but the drought meant they had to conserve water so the biggest ships could not use the Canal. And of course, the jolly old Houthis in Yemen are making the transit though the Suez Canal and Red Sea so much more exciting than it used to be.
Ships are now having to take much longer routes to avoid these conditions. This makes shipping much more expensive. If some product becomes too expensive due to shipping costs, it will not be shipped.
On the subject of shipping, if the Americans go to war with Iran, as the Israelis seem set on, the Iranians will probably close the Strait of Hormuz by sinking a few ships in the narrowest parts and suddenly, everything made of petroleum will cost vastly more and be in short supply.
Almost all the food in our civilization is grown with petroleum-derived fertilizers, drenched with herbicides and pesticides also made of petroleum and planted and harvested by machines that run on petroleum products and finally shipped by truck, train or airplane all of which run on petroleum products. It is enough to make a person thoughtful.
Considering all these factors, it makes sense to harvest and process whatever a person can both as a learning experience and as a tiny cushion against troubled times. In any case, what you preserve yourself will always be better than what you can buy and at a fraction of the cost.
Some of our friends are so accomplished that they make their own smoked salmon which is delicious. That is, kind of, post doctoral work but dehydrating some fruit and vegetables is really easy and it is so convenient to have a jar of dehydrated onions or peppers or zucchini on the counter to add to meals if, for example, you have run out of fresh. Dried peaches, apples and pears make wonderful candy.
Blanching and freezing vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli and green beans is also really easy and a good place to start. Drying herbs is even easier. I hang bunches of mint and lemon balm from a beam in my living room and I have enough of these herbs dried, rubbed up and packed to supply us with tea all winter and into next spring. If you have trouble sleeping, I hope you will try a pot of lemon balm tea before bed. It gives a wonderful, refreshing sleep.
If you are new to vegetable gardening, and are in a bit of a panic as everything seems to come ripe at the same time, don’t worry. Just go out there and harvest what won’t wait and know at the end of every long day that you have made your household that much more secure, better nourished and cozy.
