Year in the Valley

by Jackie French

  Early Peach Jam

  Peach jam is a temperamental thing at any time – it moulds and runs and ferments in a few weeks, or months at the very best, which is no loss as peach jam loses its scent in a matter of weeks. Peach jam is a luxury to be spread in summer, not hoarded in a dark larder for winter; an exquisite gift for Christmas to be gluttonised before New Year.

  Early Peach Jam is perhaps the hardest to get right – later meatier peaches are much easier to jam. But it is definitely worth it.

  2 cups sugar

  2 cups water

  juice of 2 large lemons or 4 limes

  sufficient peaches to give 4 cups peeled sliced peach flesh (don’t slice them yet!)

  Boil the sugar, water and lemon or lime juice together for 10 minutes before you peel the peaches.

  Slip the sliced peaches into the bubbles. Now stir it gently, just enough to break up the fruit and let the juice combine with the syrup. The jam will suddenly get much more liquid as the juice explodes into the pan. Keep stirring, testing often. As soon as a little sets in a saucer of cold water, pull the jam off the stove and bottle it – in small jars, so you can eat the lot in one sitting. (A large jar is certain to go off before you feed on it – unless you have a lot of guests for breakfast.) Keep the jars cool and sealed till you need them.

  This jam is incredible with cream.

  The Ginger Variation

  If you want a sort of breakfasty peach jam – I am more a pikelet or scone and jam person, and believe good jam is wasted on the coarseness of toast (but Bryan disagrees) – add half a teaspoon of peeled grated fresh ginger and cook it with the water and sugar syrup. Make sure it is as finely chopped as possible. This will give you a sort of ginger peach marmalade; the perfect summer marmalade, sweet and sour and spicy.

  SUMMER

  November 18

  Summer begins with peaches, no matter what the calendar may say, a sky hazed with heat and the cry of cicadas so omnipresent you no longer hear them.

  Picked the first gooseberries today; but gooseberries aren’t interesting if you’ve got cherries and peaches and the last of the navel oranges. They’re tough and tart, but beautifully bulging – for decoration rather than eating. Not bad with cream.

  The first strawberry is different – sweet as sunlight, hot on the skywards side and cold near the soil. No other berry will taste as good for the whole season.

  I don’t know what variety this strawberry is. I bought a yellow alpine strawberry three years ago, but this grew instead. It’s not alpine and it’s certainly not yellow – it’s pointed, succulent and bears only for a few weeks in early summer, and it’s spread all over what was once the lower vegie garden but it’s too good to pull out even if we don’t get many berries. A chance seedling I suppose, as yellow alpines are grown from seed, some wonderful mutation. I’m glad it’s ended up here, with a good home where it’s appreciated.

  I used to grow carpets of strawberries; then the wallabies discovered that strawberry leaves taste good. (Wallabies are true gourmets, ever experimental. They like pungency and tang. I could never imagine a black-tailed wallaby eating anything from McDonald’s, though they might lick the salt off a chip or two.)

  So now we only get a few berries; which is okay, as red-bellied black snakes adore strawberry beds, and your back aches after ten minutes’ picking and your face burns with the reflected heat of the soil.

  Luckily Giles grows them commercially up at Jembaicumbene – pungent, sweet, biodynamic strawberries. Even his everyday Toigas and Red Gauntlets taste good. So we buy them from him, or more often barter, as they can’t grow avocados or oranges and we usually have a cauliflower surplus in spring too, when their garden is still shrugging off the frost.

  There was a wind last night – a long, far off wind, moaning up the gorge and gusting as soon as it hit wider land. The grass is now pink with fallen rose petals and the terrace waxy with kiwi-fruit flowers – great fat petals that stick to your feet and decompose into sludge. At least leaves dry and blow away.

  There were fallen peaches between the trees when we drove down this morning, bright red against the clover or herbicided brown. We felt like leaping through the fence and rescuing them, though what we’d do with all those peaches I don’t know – I suppose the geese might like them. But Jason was spraying the trees with fungicide – a dense and deadly cloud of white, so we didn’t. Anyway, our first tree will be ripe in a week or so and we’ll be giving the things away.

  November 20

  More rain, heavy drops clanking on the roof just before the moon rose as I was getting E to bed. The moon was smoky behind the cloud, the ridges dressed in yellow fog. I went outside to check for hail but the drops were just water, cold and splodgy on my neck, and Chocolate wombat smelly wet and squeaking behind the powerhouse.

  The creek had freshened this morning; gushing where it had trickled, currents instead of stillness. Probably not a good day for the first swim of the season.

  ‘You first,’ I said to Bryan.

  ‘No, you,’ he said politely.

  So I slid down the rock, linen smooth after centuries of water, and the first shock of coldness froze my entire skin, an instant so painful it sent me lunging for the closest rock to clamber out, but by the time I’d got there I was numb instead.

  The second plunge is easier. Your body expects torture then, and so the water feels infinitely warmer in contrast. I swam for about a minute, then lay on the rock.

  The granite here drinks in the heat, and holds it, and fills you up with it if you lie on it; but you have to be naked for it to work. You feel like you’re glowing for hours afterwards. Possibly I am – granite is radioactive. How much radioactivity is present down here in the valley I really don’t want to know. I’m not moving, no matter how bad it is – and I’m sure the stress of worrying about it would be worse than the effect of the radioactivity.

  Bryan and I spent an hour absorbing rock heat before we came up for lunch.

  An Infallible Rose Love-Potion

  (Otherwise known as Rose Mulled Wine.)

  Pick three rosebuds (if any roses have survived the rain) – red, pink and white. Wear them over your heart for three days (you can take them off at night). Then toss them in claret. Add honeysuckle flowers, a few borage flowers, lots of clove scented (and tasting) carnation petals, sliced lemon and a few sprigs of lavender. (Don’t worry if you can’t get all the flowers in this recipe – just use as many as you can. The roses are the essential ingredient.)

  Add a little brown sugar or honey for a (perhaps) mild aphrodisiac effect. Steep for another three days. Heat or chill, according to taste.

  Don’t be tempted to add cinnamon or other spices – this is a subtle and very lovely drink, and spices coarsen it.

  Don’t use yellow roses – they’re the symbol of infidelity. (If you want to tell if your lover has been unfaithful get him or her to wear a red rose over their heart, then dip the rose in a river. If the rose turns yellow, he or she has been unfaithful. If the rose stays red, stop worrying.)

  Honeysuckle used to be known as ‘woodbine’ or ‘love’s bind’. A few honeysuckle flowers on the dresser are supposed to bring erotic dreams. Carnations were reputed to spring from the graves of lovers.

  Medieval Kissing Sweets

  (Also known as Sugared Rose Petals.)

  Take perfumed petals, cut off the white base (it’s bitter). Dip in beaten egg white, then in caster sugar. Leave to dry in the sun or a very, very slow oven. Store in a sealed jar – but they don’t keep long.

  Note: If you have any powdered ambergris handy, mix it with the sugar. There is a shortage of sperm whales (and their ambergris) in the swimming hole, so I’ve never tried it.

  November 21

  The corn is aiming for Jupiter, with stalks as fat as my wrist, and the silverbeet is growing crinkly. The tomatoes are almost ripe, which is probably how they’ll stay for the next month – almost getting there, then sulking till January and strong sunlight. B
ut at least I can dream we may get one next week.

  Picked the first tiny carrots today (in gumboots – there’s a red-bellied black snake in the vegie garden). They’re the size of my little finger and as sweet as sugar and almost as tasteless. Even the wallabies don’t bother with them now. Young carrots are best left whole and stewed in chicken stock with lots of chopped parsley, to give them some bite.

  November 22

  E was bubbling with bad news when I picked him up from the school bus – hail destroyed the Harrisons’ peach crop last night. A narrow swathe across the valley, missing our place and Wisbey’s, heavy enough to break branches from the trees and leave the leaves in tatters. (All I saw were bruised clouds down our valley.)

  The Harrisons have lost $100,000 worth of peaches, states E, though how accurate that is I don’t know. But it’s a tragedy nonetheless – the long winter of pruning and mowing and feeding, the spring of thinning and spraying, and now an empty harvest. Bare trees and a bare year till next year.

  They are kind people, the Harrisons. I remember when our black sheep Dunmore used to traipse down to their place every time the ewes were in season – he’d been castrated but he hadn’t noticed – and every time they’d catch him and call me and I’d lure him into the truck with a couple of Milk Arrowroot biscuits. (He loved Milk Arrowroots.) And they insisted we use their shearing shed gratis too…

  It’s sad the world can’t be kind to them as well. But there’s no malice in a storm or a drought or a fire and I hope that they can survive this too.

  November 23

  Saw the first brown snake today, pink as the granite, winding its way around the rocks by the cliff. I jumped back and it glanced at me, neck up, obviously annoyed. It was hungry, not long out of hibernation and I was disturbing it. So I tiptoed away, and let it get back to hunting lizards.

  There are a few mulberries on the tree. E, his friend Lucas, and the birds have got the rest of them so far. E and Lucas climbed the tree after swimming in the creek, and raced up here blue and naked. The mulberries turned them even bluer, like ancient Britons preparing for battle.

  So I made Mulberry Crush with the remnants.

  Mulberry Crush

  It’s almost as good as real iceblocks, says E. It works with other berries too. It’s fantastic with slightly green frozen mango – yes I know it sounds horrid, but try it. Mango is one of the few fruits we can’t grow here. Ditto pineapple. [NOTE FROM 2010: We can grow mango here now!]

  Freeze the mulberries whole. For every cup of berries take half a cup of caster sugar and the juice of a lemon. Simmer the lemon juice and sugar for 10 minutes in half a cup of water. Freeze the syrup, then bung it and the frozen berries in the blender and whacko…

  November 24

  Sue is back from shearing again. The phone rings at 9 a.m. – just time for her to get her breath after getting the boys to the bus.

  ‘You home, love? I’ll be down for a cuppa in an hour then.’

  Sue is thinner – too thin – and browner. Being a shearers’ cook is hard work. ‘But the men are darlings. Everyone says all shearers are awful but they’re really pussycats when you get to know them. Most are young – just like kids. They’ve got nothing to do but look at sheep’s bums all day – and they think any mucking-up’s the greatest fun.

  ‘I made them a lamb and onion pie last Monday, and I put bay leaves in it, and one of the blokes called out to me: “Hey, Cookie, what’s this? You trying to make koalas out of us?” He was holding up the bay leaves. He thought I’d put gum leaves in their dinner.

  ‘Then it rained Wednesday, so they had the Thursday off, and they decided they’d go yabbying in one of the great dams on the place. So they came and asked me for some old meat, and they came back that afternoon with a whole great sack of yabbies. They cleaned them and cooked them, and I made sauces. I’d already cooked the dinner but I put away as much of it as I could to eat cold the next day. Someone had gone in to town for beer and we sat outside and drank cold beer and ate fresh yabbies, and it was wonderful.

  ‘You can really stretch out there,’ says Sue. She looks out the window as though the walls of the valley are just too close.

  November 25

  Bess Wisbey brought her grand-daughter Tammy down to the school bus stop this morning. Tammy’s mother is down at the packing shed. They start work now in the cool of the morning, and will keep going till it’s dark.

  Bess was seventy this year, but you wouldn’t guess it – as the song says she might very well pass for forty-three in the dusk with the light behind her (or when she’s working in the packing shed). The whole family has been hard at it the last two weeks with the first of the peaches in, but the main body of pickers are still at uni or high school – it’ll be another fortnight or so before the valley fills up with this year’s mob of workers.

  Meanwhile Noel’s first crop is picked and packed and sold, and Rod’s is coming on. Bess looked at the sky and sighed at the heat haze already over the valley. If we have a week of cool weather Noel’s next lot of peaches will be delayed and there’ll be a bit of a break for everyone. But we probably won’t.

  Bess is going up to Sydney for four days to see her grand-daughters in a concert and she wants Ned to go too. He says he’s too busy, what with the sheds and his garden. Bess thinks both would survive for four days without him. He’ll say he missed her when she gets back and she’ll feel guilty. She’s still working on him, she says. He might change his mind by Monday.

  The swimming hole felt glorious for the first time today – liquid silk slowly spreading over your skin as you slide in. (The rock slide is a wonderful, gradual one; it takes twelve seconds to slowly submerge.)

  Peach Sorbet

  You need pale greeny white peaches for this. It can be made with yellow ones at a pinch, but it won’t be as delicate.

  10 white peaches

  2 tablespoons water

  juice of 2 limes (or small lemons if limes are impossible)

  4 egg whites

  4 tablespoons caster sugar

  Peel the peaches and mash the flesh well – it should be soft and squashy and easy to mash – then add the water and juice.

  Whip the egg whites till stiff, beat in the caster sugar till it’s shiny, then add the peach mixture. Blend in lightly and place in a covered dish in the freezer, stirring three times while freezing.

  Serve just – or even not quite – set. If it sets too hard, melt it a little before you serve it.

  Like most sorbets, this’ll stay edible for years in the freezer; but you’ll lose the fragrance after a day or two.

  A few sun-warm strawberries go well with it too; dip them in and suck them.

  Grilled Peaches

  Very quick – a good appetiser or accompaniment to grilled or cold meat.

  4 firm yellow peaches (they must be ripe and fragrant)

  4 teaspoons brown sugar

  Halve the peaches; remove the stones. Turn on the grill so the base is hot when you put in the peaches. Scatter the sugar onto the cut peach halves and grill at once till the sugar bubbles. Serve at once.

  November 30

  My birthday – so I spent the day planting out the edges of the fountain, instead of stuck indoors at the computer.

  The fountain began as a fantasy – as all good projects do – a dream last summer on a hot day, when the creek (all of twenty metres down on the flat) seemed too far away and you couldn’t smell the creek or hear it whisper or feel the sudden coolness as the air swept over the water.

  We need a creek up here, we said. A water garden like the Alhambra, a fountain indoors (we could heat it in the winter and watch it steam). But the dream compacted to a fountain outside the kitchen window where we could watch it while eating breakfast.

  It’s turned into a birthday present – but whether for me or Bryan or the birds I don’t know. The wombats haven’t discovered it yet, hopefully the sides are too steep for them to climb up and it’s too rocky on the top for them to sun
bake. I’ve planted it out with mint – apple mint and ginger mint and curly mint and water mint and white and black peppermints, Corsican mint and creeping pennyroyal and a few others that I’ve forgotten, with ferns and scented geraniums round the bottom. You can hear it from the verandah outside the bedroom and from the kitchen you can just see the interweaving rings of water.

  December 1

  Aphids on the roses. E and Celine (Giles and Victoria’s daughter) were passing, so I showed them how to eat them. A few years’ time and they’ll say ‘yuk’; but they’re still adaptable and believe what adults tell them (and don’t necessarily condemn all information from their parents, yet). So they ate them, and sure enough they were sweet…

  Food is habit. Parliamentarians who scorn the harvest of nutty, rich protein on their doorstep (bogong moths) lunch on the coagulated mammary secretions of cows (cheese).

  [NOTE FROM 2010 – WARNING: Never eat any creature, large or small, that has been eating something toxic (as opposed to indigestible) to humans, or you may end up seriously…dead.]

  A good many pests are edible. They’re just not very attractive. Actually, what is a pest to someone might be a feast to someone else – it just depends on how you look at it and if you know how to prepare it. A Martian coming to Australia might assume that sheep are a greater pest than rabbits if they didn’t know how good a leg of lamb could taste (and even with the joys of leg of lamb and mint sauce I suspect the Martian may be right).