WINTER TOMATOES ON THE VINE

Shaved Fields of Soybeans

IN BIRDLAND FALL HAS COME AND THE COMBINES HAVE SHAVED THE BEANS FROM OUR FIELDS SO THE STUBBLE IS CLOSE CROPPED LIKE A CREW CUT. The morning is crisp but I can't yet see my breath. Once in a while this Country Mouse likes to get in touch with her Urban, so this morning I took a detour on my bike to visit The Cracked Truck that parks near Uni High. They serve egg sandwiches and wraps, hot coffee on a cold morning. Also, I would get a chance to see Dylan. My middle boy works on the truck, frying eggs and chorizo, constructing sandwiches and pouring coffee. It was a brisk ride and a couple blocks out of my way, but well worth it. 

Dylan at the Cracked Truck

 It was my first trip to the truck, and as I was studying the menu, Dylan stepped lightly out of the door to give me a hug and take my order. I asked for the Plan B, and he said, “I knew you were going to order that.” It was a veggie wrap with fresh spinach and hummus. My boy knows me well. I stood on the sidewalk, balancing my bike in the breeze, smelling good smells and enjoying an easy camaraderie with the other people. We sipped coffee and smiled as we waited for our orders. Dylan handed me a warm little packet wrapped in foil, and I hurried to my office to enjoy my brunch. Deliciousness of spicy freshness! Oh, warm wrap of hummus-y delight! I don't often treat myself, but this could become a habit. Best of all, I felt like a big City Chick the entire morning.  

 But I can't stay long away from the country and this afternoon I called on my friend and neighbor, Barb, for a tomato raid. Barb and Dave plant a modest, but artful garden in their front yard. Each year has a different pattern, but always features tomatoes prominently in tall cages. This year, Dave made a circular bed bordered in bricks and planted a central column of sweet corn. Tall wire cages contain 4 tomato plants, set in 4 corners like the points on a compass. Their tomatoes are always plentiful, even in this drought year, and they generously share their bounty with pushy neighbors like me. After several years of their kindness, I now just take it upon myself to announce that I'm coming to raid their tomato patch. It is my excuse to visit and chat a little with Barb, and then we go out together to pick sun-ripened tomatoes. Each of the four cages holds a couple of varieties, so that both grape tomatoes and standard sized ones have adamantly intertwined and appear to grow on one plant.  

Now that winter approaches, Barb and I have been keeping an eye on the frost advisory. She called me to let me know that the light frost we got the other night didn't hit her tomatoes, but that it was time for me to come and pull up the plants. She lets me hang them upside-down in my basement where the leaves dry and crumble to dust, but the tomatoes themselves cling to the vine and slowly ripen over the winter. That's the way we'll have ripe tomatoes in January and February. No,they are not sun-ripened, and they do get a little bit wrinkly on the skin, but they are at least as tasty as grocery store tomatoes, picked green and ripened inside a box on a truck from who-knows-where. Barb and I chat as we pull the ripened fruit from the vines. The bushes are still heavy with green tomatoes, and we pull the plants up, cage and all, and stuff the bulky green column into the back of my car. I take it home and cut the plant out of the cage, stem by stem, to hang in bundles under the stairs in my basement. The sun is going down, and I'm carrying bundles back and forth, dreaming of fresh tomatoes in the depths of winter.

DREAM IN BEAUTY;
ENVISION PEACE;
BLESSED BE.

GATHERING BEAUTY

AUTUMN IS A TIME FOR GATHERING, FOR HARVESTING, FOR PUTTING UP STORES TO GET US THROUGH THE LONG NIGHTS OF A LONG, COLD WINTER. After the monstrous drought this summer, there's not much to harvest in my yard—tomatoes accumulate on the vine, but only enough to sprinkle on my salad; the peach trees bloomed early in the premature spring, but then met with a late frost; the walnut tree drops a few nuts one by one, instead of dozens by dozens as it does in most years. I kick 5 or 6 green ones into a little pile to let the husks darken and begin to rot off before I bring them in to crack. Last year I filled bushel baskets and couldn't keep ahead of them. I won't have that problem this year. I keep my eye open for other harvesting options and I found a little feral apple tree over by an abandoned storefront. It wants pruning, but somehow, despite the drought and lack of care, put out a bumper crop of golden apples that are just now starting to fall. I park my car in its shade and pull a canvas shopping bag out and bend to pick up the windfalls.

After the Monstrous Drought

As I come over to the other side, I start. A woman stands silently with her own bag in her hand. “Oh, hello!” I laugh. “I'm glad I'm not the only one who appreciates these apples!” She is friendly, but seems disappointed in the apples. “These are bad apples,” she tells me. Judging from her lovely, colorful clothes and her accent, she is from the Indian subcontinent. I look into my bag. Yes, many are a little wormy and some are bruised from falling off the tree. They seem to be a golden delicious, nicely firm. I tell her that I just pick them up anyway and cut out the bad parts, peeling them and freezing the good parts for pies. We chat a little at our work, and walk away with maybe a half a bushel each. I take my harvest home and that night I sit in the Adirondack chair and peel and core them until it gets dark, then move my production in the house, collecting a big bowl of parings for the chickens.

I stop to watch the flow
of golden kernels..

 But I am not the only one harvesting. Yesterday I came home to find Jim and Sean in the fields, cutting the corn. I didn't have high hopes for the bounty of this year's crop, but I still love to watch the big combine slowly making its way across the field, leaving a wake of cornstubble. The grain truck waits by the road and periodically the combine creeps over to dump its load of corn into the waiting truck. I stop to watch the flow of golden kernels. Dust rises and the pile grows. The air fills with the ringing of grain flowing through the metal tube and dropping into the truck. When the combine is empty, it turns slowly back to cut more corn.

 I stood for a moment and watched. I had laundry to hang and bread to loaf, lessons to plan and papers to grade. I thought about shirking my duties and shedding my cares, running out into the field, waving my hand and chasing down the combine. Whoever was driving would stop and let me climb aboard, sitting up in the glass paneled cabin high above everything. Jim or Sean would kindly listen to my questions about the rhythms of the farmer's year, and entertain with kindly amusement my latest crazy ideas for what to plant in the grass waterway. But this evening, responsibility wins out and I gather my bags and turn to go into the house, thinking that I'll catch them when they harvest the beans.

Harvest Beauty;
Reap Peace;
Blessed Be.