The Wisdom of the Radish

by Lynda Browning

  “Don’t shove your nasty fingers in my face!” he said, swerving away.

  “I’m just saying, I think it’s too late for this rooster. I think we wrecked it.”

  I pulled out my hands, walked over to the sink, ran painfully hot water over my fingers, and started scrubbing. Emmett reached into the rooster with a look of resolve that mirrored the look he had worn just before swinging the hatchet.

  “Well, I may as well just yank everything out, then.”

  “Don’t break it! We might not have ruined it yet. Be careful, would you?”

  From my vantage point, I couldn’t be sure what was happening inside the rooster, but clearly I had loosened the jar lid. Emmett’s face was impassive as, with one pull, he brought a mass of organs out. He spotted the bright green gallbladder and separated it from the pile. A second pull brought the last of it out—heart, lungs, gizzard.

  The lungs, spongy and pink, seemed to come out whole—at least, I couldn’t see anything missing from them. But our chicken-processing guides warned us that they’d left behind plenty of lung tissue jammed between the chicken’s ribs and suctioned on to the chest wall like glue. Apparently those who regularly eviscerate chickens have a special tool for the removal of lung tissue. Ever the resourceful vegetarians, we used a grapefruit spoon.

  Once we scraped the lung tissue out with our serrated spoon, rinsed, and repeated, we were in a good place. The heart, gizzard (a muscular purse filled with dozens of tiny jewel-like stones), trachea, and lungs were removed. The dangerous bile-filled gallbladder was out, and the poop-filled intestine was loosened from the cavity and pulled safely outside the bird. To finish up, Emmett cut around the base of the intestine. “You realize what you’re doing,” I told Emmett. “You’re literally ripping it a new one.”

  He didn’t appreciate my humor, but after three hours of organ removal my soul screamed out for crass jokes and beer.

  I had to fight the urge to whine, “Are we done?” The intestine and gallbladder were in a bucket ready to be thrown away. The rinsed heart, liver, and gizzard were in a Mason jar in the fridge with the feet. But just when we thought we’d finished, Emmett spotted another organ situated high inside the cavity—up in the chest, the part that the rooster sticks out proudly when he crows.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Uh, liver? No, wait, there are two of them. Kidney?”

  And then I noticed two skinny white tubes, attached to what I thought were the kidneys, going down to the animal’s rear end.

  “Jesus. I think those would be the testicles.”

  Ah, yes. Here was what those two-month-old Cornish Crosses lacked. No wonder my roosters were always so horny: their testes were literally the size of their hearts. I winced as I pulled them out and, in doing so, severed the tubes. A white liquid oozed out of them and into the body cavity. “Yum,” I told Emmett, “Rooster jizz!”

  And then I rinsed out the body cavity with cold running water seven times, just to be sure no rooster tadpoles ended up in my gravy. Exhausted, we placed the rooster in a cooler with ice to rest overnight and resolved to cook it the following day.

  I grew up eating meat, but it had been about seven years since I’d cooked it myself. To roast the rooster, I had to reach back deep into the memory bank, which in my case was more of a memory colander. I have a knack for remembering stories, but I rarely hold on to the facts that accompany them. So I remembered the arc of the roast: the naked massage with butter, salt, and herbs, and the offerings—lemon, rosemary, garlic—stuffed inside the cavity; the frequent checking, basting, and temperature-taking; and the glorious finale when it’s pulled out of the oven, sliced into, and presented flawlessly on a white platter.

  But I had no idea how to get from naked massage to plated, browned bird. I called my mom to check what temperature I should set the oven for, and made up the rest.

  My bird, which had plenty of food to eat but was also very active, had less fat than confined birds. I slipped a couple of spoonfuls of vegan butter under the skin, above the breast where it would melt and ooze down to soak the meat. I rubbed the outside with more vegan butter, and then rubbed salt and pepper onto that. After checking the Internet’s opinion, I turned up the oven temperature to “seal in the flavors” for the first ten minutes before lowering it to my mother’s suggested temperature. I rubbed the cavity with a mixture of salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary, then filled it with the bounty of our farm fields: halved Meyer lemons, four rosemary sprigs, several peeled garlic cloves, and a halved and peeled onion.

  Into the oven went the bird.

  As the fat leaked down into the glass pan, it started to burn. I added a little white wine to the bottom of the pan and basted the bird periodically with the wine/fat mixture. As the delicious smell of roast chicken filled the air, Emmett stuck a thermometer in the thigh to make sure it was safely cooked. It was, and he carved.

  If hatching chicks were Christmas, then this was Thanksgiving. We thanked the rooster for his sacrifice and settled down to a dinner of juicy, tender meat, with sides of our home-grown broccoli and mashed potatoes.

  The gravy, which happened almost by accident, was the most delicious I’d had in my life. It was just drippings and the white wine I’d put in the bottom of the pan to prevent burning, accented with the lemon, garlic, rosemary, and sage that I’d stuffed in the cavity. I thickened the juices with a sprinkling of flour, which gave the gravy the color and texture I remembered, and mellowed out the flavor a bit.

  Emmett, vegan since he was sixteen, devoured the legs with gusto. Ever the finicky city girl, I stuck to the breast meat—which, though not as ample as the breast meat you’d get from a Cornish Cross, was entirely adequate.

  The Buff Chanticleer fed us for a week. Roast chicken supper, chicken sandwiches, chicken noodle soup rich with marrow. Nothing went to waste, and we buried the remaining bones in the garden. And while we buried the bones out of respect for our rooster, I think that the truest sign of respect was having given this bird a contented life, at the end of which not a single part of him went to waste.

  Chapter 10:

  BOX OF BRASSICAS

  Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale, and Cabbage

  Only miscreants survived the frost.

  The mischievous chickens foraged in the crunchy grass, apparently unfazed by the chill of the ground beneath their bare, scaly claws. At night, they huddled together in the coop, sharing the heat generated by their clumped body mass. When I came in to check on them they moaned softly, a noise not of this world but somehow emanating from interrupted chicken dreams, whatever those may be—fierce foxes or endless yogurt fountains, hawks overhead or abundant juicy corn worms.

  The bitter brassicas also shrugged off the season’s new sparkle. The crystalline coating that adorned their leaves in the morning melted by midday, and they were none the worse for wear when their frosty garments dissolved. The brassicas stood in the middle of an apocalypse—the broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and cabbage green and bright despite the browned and withered tomato forest with its rotting fruits dripping from the brittle vines. The bean jungle had become skeletal. Dried pods rattled in the wind. And everywhere along the ground, the dead squash plants lay, waiting to trip passersby, their dark, hollow stems desiccated but wiry.

  With the frost came wind and rainstorms blowing down from Canada or spiraling in from the Pacific. The rainwater beaded on the brassica leaves, and when the shiny balls were big enough, they rolled down to the center of the plant and dripped down to the roots, which in turn funneled the water back up to the pert, voluminous leaves.

  And with the onset of storms, it felt like it was time for the farmers’ markets to close up shop. But of course, the weather and the farmers’ market don’t always discuss timing with one another.

  I could definitely have been miserable. It was Saturday morning, and we were on our way to the Healdsburg farmers’ market. Because it was so cold—a biting wind blew in the night before as clouds billowed in the n
orthwest—we’d harvested all of the produce the day before and left it in the exterior refrigerator, a.k.a. the porch, covered with damp towels. At 8:00 a.m., the air hovered in the upper thirties, an entirely inappropriate temperature for coastal California. This wind must have been putting whitecaps on the Russian River—when gusts hit, our truck slipped sideways on the road. The fat-dropped rain had us flicking the windshield wipers as fast as they’d go.

  But as we pulled into the parking lot, I had to smile. I get high on storms. I once spent five weeks at sea, and the highlight (certainly of the trip, and maybe of my life) was holding the helm and guiding a one-hundred-foot steel-hulled sailing ship through thirty-knot winds and twenty-foot swells. I’ll never forget my determination as I focused all of my energy on maintaining the swinging compass’s heading, while the boat was swept off course by a huge swell, corrected, overcorrected, and back again.

  As we pulled into our usual spot, a pop-up tent across the way lifted up, skittered a few feet, and slammed into a van. My smile grew: the Healdsburg farmers’ market looked like a sailboat caught in a squall. Canvas umbrellas swelled and took flight, vendors scurrying after to try and lash them down. Farmers huddled together, commiserating and trying to talk over wind that ripped their words and flung them to the sky. One wore a yellow rain suit—foulies, we called the rubber duck jackets and pants with their elastic cuffs and distinct lack of breathability that ensured that it rained both inside the suit and out.

  I glanced over at Emmett, zipped up my rain jacket, and stepped outside. Within minutes my hair hung in wet ropes about my face, wind-whipped and sticking to my cheeks. What’s the use of weather if you’re not out in it anyway?

  Given the dangers of storm-tossed umbrellas and the consistency of the downpour, which hadn’t let up for a single moment since we woke early this morning, we opted to miniaturize our farm stand. One table only so that everything could fit under our umbrella—our umbrella that wasn’t waterproof or even water resistant, but would still, we hoped, shunt the majority of the rain to the side. No price signs because all of our signs were made of paper. It was technically illegal, but if we had put the signs out, the ink would have bled out either before or after the wind blew them away.

  On display were the survivors of the season: brassicas, plus chard and storage crops. Winter is a challenging time for flora even in relatively mild northern California. Although we may not have blizzards or ice storms to contend with, we have chilly days and freezing nights: cause enough for plenty of plants to batten down the hatches and head below deck for the year. Frost wreaks havoc on those plants—like the squashes—that aren’t equipped to deal with it. And the depressed temperatures, combined with fewer hours of daylight, slow down the metabolism and growth of any remaining frost-tolerant, edible plants. (Although somehow, it never seems to daunt the weeds.)

  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most common method of surviving the winter is simply not to. While this route isn’t the most convenient for herbivores or the carnivores that subsist on them, it actually works out just fine for plants. The individual plant dies, but its genetic material (ensconced in seeds or bulbs) chills, so to speak, until spring—when warmer temperatures trigger germination and the process begins again.

  Some plants, however, have learned to live on the edge. By extending their growing season, they gain an advantage: the ability to function year-round. These frost-hardy warriors last longer, grow longer, and therefore have more energy available—energy that can transform into leaves for the farmer to harvest or from which to make seeds. They can function at a time when other plants die back, so there’s less vertical competition for light. And they grow at a time when other plants have died and are in the process of releasing nutrients into the soil—a useful trick in nutrient-poor environments.

  In order to reap these benefits, the plants have had to develop some form of frost, or even freezing, resistance. (Frost resistance and freezing resistance are different abilities; while some plants can tolerate only light frosts, others can freeze solid and then spring back to life upon melting.) The processes that prevent freezing—the destruction of the plant on a violent cell-by-cell basis—are both molecular and miraculous.

  Ice crystals outlined each leaf of our baby lettuces during our first frost.

  Let’s start with frost tolerance. Water famously freezes at 32 degrees F, but a water-based beer in the freezer won’t solidify until it hits 28 degrees F or so. This is because alcohol has a significantly lower freezing point than water—about 200 degrees cooler, in fact. (Alcohol freezes at–173 degrees F.) So the alcohol content in the water acts as an antifreeze solution, allowing the water to supercool rather than crystallize.

  Clearly, brassicas don’t produce alcohol in their leaves; I think it’s safe to say that if they did, the world would be a lot more excited to eat raw kale. But they do produce sugars and proteins that function similarly, and prevent the leaf from freezing if the temperature dips a bit below 32 degrees F.

  If it gets cold enough, though, the antifreeze approach fails and the solution starts to solidify. If the plant is only frost tolerant, the proverbial beer bottle bursts. But some plants have developed an antifreezing or “cryoprotective” strategy. Basically, they take the cap off the beer bottle, let out enough beer so that the bottle doesn’t break, and then suck the beer back in when the temperature is sufficiently warm for the solution to melt again.

  Specifically, these plants extrude water from their cells as the temperature approaches freezing. The plants wilt as if they’re crawling through a dessert, dried up and about to die. Tiny crevasses open up in the leaves to catch the escaping water. The plants freeze, but because there’s hardly any water left in the cells, the cell walls don’t break. Then, when the water melts, it’s reabsorbed by the cells. The wilted plants spring back to life, pert, green, and ready to greet the day.

  Which begs the question: AmIabrassica or a beer?

  Wormy corn’s ability to drive customers away is nothing compared to what the rain can do, at least in fair-weather California. If you think you’re the kind of person who would laugh about (and then devour) wormy corn, what would you do at 9 a.m. on a Saturday when the heavens have opened their floodgates and the farmers’ market stands are threatening to lift off their moorings and float away down Healdsburg Avenue? Would you check your wallet for cash, don a rain slicker, grab your stoutest umbrella, and head to the car ... or would the sound of the rain pounding the roof gently fade away as you cozy up in bed, wound tight in a comforter and lost in a book?

  Perhaps in Oregon the customers possess more pluck, but in Healdsburg, few buyers set sail in the rain. As our first customer approached, suited up and clutching a drenched basket, I had to stifle the Ahoy that rose in my throat.

  “Hi, Care!” Emmett shouted, recognizing the shrouded figure before I did.

  “Hi guys,” she replied. “Bit wet today, eh?”

  Nearby, a farmer lifted the roof of her tent up with a stick, releasing a giant puddle of water that slammed into the asphalt.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “Not the best day for a market.”

  “Well, if you guys have to be here, we have to be here, too!” Care said.

  And in one sentence, Care articulated the attitude that will make the local food movement stick. Although one wet weekend might not break a farm, a fair-weather attitude to local farming very well could. Does the recent popularity of local farms represent a permanent shift in production, or will the farm food fad fade? Farmers’ markets have exploded in recent years, and so far the customer base has risen up to meet them. If that base disappears, thousands of new small farms will find themselves stranded: because farming is an investment meant to be recouped and borne out over time, it’s not the sort of business that’s easy to get into or out of. Economists might not care about the vagaries of their supply and demand curves, but I hope that we’re not a country of economists. I have a hunch that the majority of Americans would
feel a little tug at their heartstrings, were all the small farms in their neighborhoods to close up shop.

  Care bought some broccoli and chard. As I watched customers in fogged-up cars rummage for umbrellas and steel themselves for their wet excursion, I was heartened by the fact that there were others like her. Over the course of the summer, I’d met people who felt that we needed backyard gardens and farm tours, local livestock and cheerful rows of wormy corn, so that future generations of children could experience a sense of America’s history—and beyond that, an understanding that no matter how technologically advanced our society becomes, someone will still have to grow the food that feeds us all.

  Customers laughed telling me stories about city kids who thought spaghetti grew on trees. And I laughed in turn when people wanted to buy my “rhubarb,” which was actually rainbow chard. (I laughed partly because I’d be a fool to sell rhubarb with its deadly, poisonous leaves still attached to the stem.) But my younger self didn’t know what chard was, let alone that its bright red stems bear some resemblance to rhubarb stalks. I may have gathered from the USDA food pyramid that spaghetti wasn’t a fruit, and hence wasn’t something that grew on trees, but beyond that my knowledge of where food really came from ended at the grocery store receipt.

  Emmett thought that two broccoli heads were better than one.

  As a child, my only interaction with livestock came at the San Diego Zoo where, on a lucky day, you just might catch a chick hatching out of an incubator. They didn’t mention that the chicks hatched were meat birds destined for the cheetah enclosure, but in retrospect I’m guessing that’s the way it went. And rather than finding it repulsive, I think that’s pretty damn cool. I’m no expert, but I think kids should know that it takes life to feed other life. For Thanksgiving this year, we bought a heritage turkey from a farmer just across the county border in Mendocino. He had two beautiful daughters, the smaller young enough to count her age out on one hand. She wore a floral print dress and smiled shyly as her dad explained that she was in charge of removing the gizzards from all of the turkeys they processed for customers that Thanksgiving. She wasn’t traumatized; she was proud. And I’ll bet she really enjoyed her Thanksgiving dinner.