As simply as that, a year of planning and family labor turned to red mush.
Our growers had been warned that this could happen--market buyers generally don't sign a binding contract. So the farmers took a risk, and took a loss. Some of them will try again next year, though they will likely hedge their bets with Delicata squash and peas as well. Courage, practicality, and making the best of a bad situation are much of what farming is about. Before the tomatoes all rotted away, Appalachian Harvest found a way to donate and distribute the enormous excess of unpurchased produce to needy families. The poor of our county were rich in tomatoes that summer.
"We were glad we could give it away," one of the farmers told me. "We like to be generous and help others, that's fine, that's who we are. But a lot of us are barely making ends meet, ourselves. It seems like it's always the people that have the least who end up giving the most. Why is that?"
In Charlottesville, Asheville, Roanoke, and Knoxville, supermarket shoppers had no way of knowing how much heartache and betrayal might be wrapped up in those cellophane two-packs of California tomatoes. Maybe they noticed the other tomatoes were missing this week, those local ones with the "Healthy Farms, Close to Home" label. Or maybe they just saw "organic tomatoes," picked them up, and dropped them into their carts on top of the cereal boxes and paper towels. Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.
They will or they won't. And the happy grocery store music plays on.
* * *
Canning Season
BY CAMILLE
When I was a kid, summer was as long as a lifetime. A month could pass without me ever knowing what day of the week it was. Time seemed to stretch into one gigantic, lazy day of blackberry picking and crawdad hunting. My friends and I would pretty much spend our lives together, migrating back and forth between the town swimming pool and the woods, where we would pretend to be orphans left to our own devices in the wilderness. School was not on our minds. Our world was green grass, sunshine, and imagination.
Then August would roll around: a tragedy every time. "Already? How can this be?" I would ask, shattered by the terrible truth that I needed a three-ring binder and some #2 pencils. It's not that school was a bad thing. Summer was just so much better.
August is rarely announced to kids by a calendar. For some of my friends it was the shiny floors and fluorescent lights of the department stores with their back-to-school sales that brought the message. For me it was the bubbling canning bath and the smell of tomatoes. In my family the end of summer means the drone of our food-dehydrator is background music, and you can't open the fridge without huge lumpy bags of produce falling out and clobbering your feet. Every spare half-hour goes into cutting up something to be preserved: the beans and corn to be blanched and frozen, the cucumbers sliced and pickled, the squash frozen or dehydrated or pawned off on a friend. And then there are the tomatoes. Pounds of them roll down from the garden each day, staining every one of our kitchen towels with their crimson juices. We slice little ones by the hundred and lay them out on the stackable trays of our food-drier. We can the medium-sized ones, listening afterward for each "ping" that tells us the jar lid has properly sealed. The rest go into big, bubbling pots of tomato sauce.
I'm sure this sounds like a hassle and mess to those who have never done it. But for us it's an important part of summer. Not only because the outcome is great meals for the rest of the year, but because the process is our way of saying good-bye to the sunshine and pace of summer, and reflecting on what the season gave us. August's busy kitchen is our transition from the long, open-ended hours of summer outdoor work to the stricter routines of school and work in the fall. I like to think of it as an end-of-summer meditation.
American culture doesn't allow much room for slow reflection. I watch the working people who are supposed to be my role models getting pushed to go, go, go and take as little vacation time as possible. And then, often, vacations are full of endless activity too, so you might come back from your "break" feeling exhausted. Canning tomato sauce isn't exactly a week at the spa, but it definitely forces a pause in the multitasking whirl of everyday life. It's a "slow down and do one thing at a time" process: now chop vegetables, now stir them until the sauce thickens, now sterilize the jars, make sure each ring is tight. If you're going to do anything else at the same time, it had better just be listening to your own thoughts. Anything else could cause you to blow the entire batch. Canning always puts me in a kind of trance. I reach a point where stirring the bubbling sauce is the world's only task, and I could do it forever. Whether you prefer to sit on a rock in a peaceful place, or take a wooden spoon to a simmering pot, it does the body good to quiet down and tune in.
The basic canning process is as simple as this: (1) tomatoes are dropped into boiling water and peeled, or else cooked down with other ingredients into sauce; (2) they are poured into sterilized mason jars (we take them straight from the dishwasher) and capped with two-part, screw-on lids; and (3) the filled jars are boiled for the number of minutes specified by the recipe, in a big pot of water. We use an enamelware canning kettle that handles ten quarts at a time.
The following recipes are some personal favorites for storing our bounty of summer produce all year long. The family secret in our tomato sauce (which obviously won't be, now) is cinnamon and nutmeg, usually thought of as dessert spices but used in savory tomato dishes in Greek and some Middle Eastern cuisines. The three-sauce recipe is adapted from The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food by Janet Chadwick. Our green-bean Holy Mole was inspired by Recipes from a Kitchen Garden by Renee Shepherd and Fran Raboff--a helpful book for preparing meals based on fresh garden produce. The recipes are simple but very creative.
FRIJOLE-MOLE
1/2 pound trimmed green beans
Steam until tender.
1 coarsely chopped onion
1 tablespoon olive oil
Saute onions over medium heat until they become slightly transparent.
3 hard-boiled eggs
2 cups fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional)
Combine beans, cooked onions, eggs, basil, and lemon juice in food processor and blend into a coarse puree.
Mayonnaise or yogurt
Salt and pepper
Remove puree to a bowl and combine with enough mayonnaise or yogurt to hold mixture together. Add salt and pepper to taste. This spread is fantastic served on crusty bread, crackers, or rice cakes.
FAMILY SECRET TOMATO SAUCE
The point of this recipe is to make a large amount at one time, when tomatoes are in season. If you're canning it, stick closely to the recipe; adding additional fresh vegetables will change the pH so it's unsafe for water-bath canning. If you're freezing it, then it's fine to throw in peppers, mushrooms, fresh garlic, whatever you want. This recipe makes 6-7 quarts--you can use a combination of pint and quart canning jars or freezer boxes.
10 quarts tomato puree (about 30 pounds tomatoes)
4 large onions, chopped
1 cup dried basil
1/2 cup honey
4 tablespoons dried oregano
3 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons ground dried lemon peel
2 tablespoons thyme
2 tablespoons garlic powder (or more, to taste)
2 tablespoons dried parsley
2 teaspoons pepper
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Soften onions in a heavy 3-gallon kettle--add a small amount of water if necessary but no oil if you are canning (very important!). Add pureed tomatoes and all seasonings, bring to a boil, and simmer on low heat for two to three hours until sauce has thickened to your liking. Stir frequently, especially toward the end, to avoid burning. Meanwhile, heat water in canner bath, sterilize jars in boiling water or dishwasher, and pour boiling water over jar lids.
Bottled lemon juice or citric acid--NOT optional!
Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice OR
1/2 teaspoon citric acid to each quart jar (half that much to pint jars). This ensures that the sauce will be safely acidic. When the sauce is ready, ladle it into the jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Cap jars, lower gently into canner and boil for 35 minutes. Remove, cool, check all seals, label, and store for winter.
RELISH, SAUCE, AND CHUTNEY--ALL IN ONE DAY
If you don't have a garden, you can stock up on tomatoes, peaches, apples, and onions at the end of summer, when your farmers' market will have these at the year's best quality and price. Then, schedule a whole afternoon and a friend for this interesting project that gives you three different, delicious products to eat all winter.
Canning jars and lids: 14 pint jars, 7 half-pint jars
Start with a very large, heavy kettle. You will be adding different ingredients and canning different sauces as you go.
4 quarts tomato puree
24 apples
7 cups chopped onions
2 quarts cider vinegar
6 cups sugar
2/3 cup salt
3 teaspoons ground cloves
3 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons mustard
Puree tomatoes; core and coarsely chop apples; coarsely chop onions. Combine in large pot along with the vinegar, sugar, and seasonings. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 2 hours or until thick. Meanwhile, preheat water in a canner bath and sterilize jars and lids (in boiling water or dishwasher) and keep them hot until use. Fill 7 pint jars with some of the thickened Barbecue Relish, leaving 1/2 inch headspace in each jar. Put filled jars in canner with lids screwed on tightly and boil for ten minutes. Remove and cool.
2 quarts sliced peaches
6 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
In a separate pan, cook peaches and water for 10 minutes, until soft. Add sugar and bring slowly to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Boil until thick (15 minutes), stirring to prevent scorching.
Add peach mixture to the remaining tomato mixture in the kettle and bring back up to a boil to make Sweet and Sour Sauce. Fill 7 pint jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace; boil in canner for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.
1 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts
Add these to the kettle, mix well, and bring it back to a boil to make Chutney. Fill 7 half-pint jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Boil in canner for 10 minutes. Remove.
As all the jars cool, make sure the jar lids pop their seals by creating a vacuum as contents cool. You'll hear them go "ping." To double-check, after they're entirely cooled, push down on each lid's center--it should feel firmly sucked down, not loose. (If a jar didn't seal, refrigerate and use the contents soon.) The ring portion of the lid can be removed before storing; when processed properly, the dome lids will stay securely sealed until you open the jar with a can opener.
Label each product before you forget what's what, and share with the friend who helped. The Barbecue Relish is great on broiled or grilled fish or chicken. The Sweet and Sour Sauce gives an Asian flavor to rice dishes. Chutney can perk up anything.
Download these and all other Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com
TOMATO SEASON MEAL PLAN
Sunday ~ Grilled chicken with tomato salad and corn on the cob
Monday ~ Homemade gazpacho with fresh bread and cream cheese
Tuesday ~ Roasted tomato-eggplant ratatouille with rice (or bread) and grated Parmesan
Wednesday ~ Grilled fish or lamb, served with crusty bread, chutney, and green-bean pate
Thursday ~ Asian vegetable stir fry with soba noodles (or rice) and sweet-and-sour sauce
Friday ~ Pizza with sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella, and a drizzle of olive oil
Saturday ~ Pasta with fresh homemade tomato sauce and meatballs
* * *
14 * YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY ON HARVEST DAY
September
The Saturday of Labor Day weekend dawned with a sweet, translucent bite, like a Golden Delicious apple. I always seem to harbor a childlike hope through the berry-stained months of June and July that summer will be for keeps. But then a day comes in early fall to remind me why it should end, after all. In September the quality of daylight shifts toward flirtation. The green berries on the spicebush shrubs along our lane begin to blink red, first one and then another, like faltering but resolute holiday lights. The woods fill with the restless singing of migrant birds warming up to the proposition of flying south. The cool air makes us restless too: jeans and sweater weather, perfect for a hike. Steven and I rose early that morning, looked out the window, looked at each other, and started in on the time-honored marital grumble: Was this your idea?
We weren't going on a hike today. Nor would we have the postsummer Saturday luxury of sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee and watching the farm wake up. On the docket instead was a hard day of work we could not postpone. The previous morning we'd sequestered half a dozen roosters and as many tom turkeys in a room of the barn we call "death row." We hold poultry there, clean and comfortable with water but no food, for a twenty-four-hour fast prior to harvest. It makes the processing cleaner and seems to calm the animals also. I could tell you it gives them time to get their emotional affairs in order, if that helps. But they have limited emotional affairs, and no idea what's coming.
We had a lot more of both. Our plan for this gorgeous day was the removal of some of our animals from the world of the living into the realm of food. At five months of age our roosters had put on a good harvest weight, and had lately opened rounds of cockfighting, venting their rising hormonal angst against any moving target, including us. When a rooster flies up at you with his spurs, he leaves marks. Lily now had to arm herself with a length of pipe in order to gather the eggs. Our barnyard wasn't big enough for this much machismo. We would certainly take no pleasure in the chore, but it was high time for the testosterone-reduction program. We sighed at the lovely weather and pulled out our old, bloody sneakers for harvest day.
There was probably a time when I thought it euphemistic to speak of "harvesting" animals. Now I don't. We calculate "months to harvest" when planning for the right time to start poultry. We invite friends to "harvest parties," whether we'll be gleaning vegetable or animal. A harvest implies planning, respect, and effort. With animals, both the planning and physical effort are often greater, and respect for the enterprise is substantially more complex. It's a lot less fun than spending an autumn day picking apples off trees, but it's a similar operation on principle and the same word.
Killing is a culturally loaded term, for most of us inextricably tied up with some version of a command that begins, "Thou shalt not." Every faith has it. And for all but perhaps the Jainists of India, that command is absolutely conditional. We know it does not refer to mosquitoes. Who among us has never killed living creatures on purpose? When a child is sick with an infection we rush for the medicine spoon, committing an eager and purposeful streptococcus massacre. We sprinkle boric acid or grab a spray can to rid our kitchens of cockroaches. What we mean by "killing" is to take a life cruelly, as in murder--or else more accidentally, as in "Oops, looks like I killed my African violet." Though the results are incomparable, what these different "killings" have in common is needless waste and some presumed measure of regret.
Most of us, if we know even a little about where our food comes from, understand that every bite put into our mouths since infancy (barring the odd rock or marble) was formerly alive. The blunt biological truth is that we animals can only remain alive by eating other life. Plants are inherently more blameless, having been born with the talent of whipping up their own food, peacefully and without noise, out of sunshine, water, and the odd mineral ingredient sucked up through their toes. Strangely enough, it's the animals to which we've assigned some rights, while the saintly plants we maim and behead with moral impunity. Who thinks to beg forgiveness while
mowing the lawn?
The moral rules of destroying our fellow biota get even more tangled, the deeper we go. If we draw the okay-to-kill line between "animal" and "plant," and thus exclude meat, fowl, and fish from our diet on moral grounds, we still must live with the fact that every sack of flour and every soybean-based block of tofu came from a field where countless winged and furry lives were extinguished in the plowing, cultivating, and harvest. An estimated 67 million birds die each year from pesticide exposure on U.S. farms. Butterflies, too, are universally killed on contact in larval form by the genetically modified pollen contained in most U.S. corn. Foxes, rabbits, and bobolinks are starved out of their homes or dismembered by the sickle mower. Insects are "controlled" even by organic pesticides; earthworms are cut in half by the plow. Contrary to lore, they won't grow into two; both halves die.
To believe we can live without taking life is delusional. Humans may only cultivate nonviolence in our diets by degree. I've heard a Buddhist monk suggest the number of food-caused deaths is minimized in steak dinners, which share one death over many meals, whereas the equation is reversed for a bowl of clams. Others of us have lost heart for eating any steak dinner that's been shoved through the assembly line of feedlot life--however broadly we might share that responsibility. I take my gospel from Wendell Berry, who writes in What Are People For, "I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable in order to feed me.
If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade. And I am getting almost as fussy about food plants."
I find myself fundamentally allied with a vegetarian position in every way except one: however selectively, I eat meat. I'm unimpressed by arguments that condemn animal harvest while ignoring, wholesale, the animal killing that underwrites vegetal foods. Uncountable deaths by pesticide and habitat removal--the beetles and bunnies that die collaterally for our bread and veggie-burgers--are lives plumb wasted. Animal harvest is at least not gratuitous, as part of a plan involving labor and recompense. We raise these creatures for a reason. Such premeditation may be presumed unkind, but without it our gentle domestic beasts in their picturesque shapes, colors, and finely tuned purposes would never have had the distinction of existing. To envision a vegan version of civilization, start by erasing from all time the Three Little Pigs, the boy who cried wolf, Charlotte's Web, the golden calf, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Next, erase civilization, brought to you by the people who learned to domesticate animals. Finally, rewrite our evolutionary history, since Homo sapiens became the species we are by means of regular binges of carnivory.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life Page 24