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Summer Preserves

February 16, 2020February 16, 2020 / PK Read / Leave a comment

**Kangaroo Grass**
Dorinth Doherty
Digital Collage made from x-rays captured at PlantBank (Australia)

My late grandmother had a shed out behind her house that was always lined with jars of summer preserves, but she was dismissive of her jewelled shelves. She claimed she did all the work out of pure habit. When she was a girl, they did real winter preparations. It was serious business, drying the grains, shaving corn, getting flour milled. It was the stuff of survival, not the modern day practice that was just in case they got snowed in for a few days.

She was born in 1910 and grew up on a farm in Washington State. During the summers I spent with her in the 1960s and 70s, she was still performing remnants of her girlhood training during WWI and then the Depression: Putting up preserves for the long winters. When she was young, preserving the harvest from the previous season also included the seeds of the next’s years crops. Properly dried, put up in sacks and hung from the rafters (at least, that’s how she described it).

**Eucalyptus I, II, III, IV**
Dorinth Doherty
Digital collage made from x-rays captured at PlantBank (Australia)

By the time I was visiting her, she was using store-bought seeds for her gardening, and didn’t truly worry about not getting through the winter. After all, there were always freezers and supermarkets. By my time, people had started putting up preserves as a hobby, not as a means of survival.

These days, preserving last years crops has taken on a whole new meaning. Around the world, seed archives have been created to safeguard plant species in the face of the climate crisis. As habitats change and disappear, as the climate heats up and becomes less predictable, we are stocking our shelves for tomorrow.

**Thirst**
Dorinth Doherty
Digital Chromogenic Lenticular Photograph

My grandmother Helen passed at age 101, but she would have been fascinated by the new preserves, the stuff we’re putting away for the long summer to come. We are placing hope in our future selves that we will be able to protect biodiversity then, even if we are failing at protecting it now.

All the images here are from the portfolio of Dornith Doherty, who is documenting these archives around the world in her Archiving Eden project.

Unique examples of the world’s plant life, not just for our consumption. They may have to last a lot longer than my grandmother’s winter preserves.

Solstice Cake

June 21, 2019February 16, 2020 / PK Read / Leave a comment

Happy Summer Solstice to the Northern Hemisphere. Today on Twitter, someone wrote that they were depressed about the state of the world, the way things are going, and not even chocolate cake could help.

Blossoming weeds grow up through last year’s leaves. Photo: PKR

It’s the longest day of the year (and shortest night), a good time to reflect on how life flows in a rhythm that has constant change and also a wealth of constants. Summer solstice is my favorite solstice when it comes to weather and general merriment, but my second favorite in terms of symbolism.

For as of today, no matter how green and blossoming and warm it might be (and today in my corner of eastern France, it is all those things, with birdsong and light breezes and a tree heavy with ripening cherries thrown in), from now on the days will shorten inexorably until late December and the next solstice. Summer is just beginning, and those lush trees and meadows are already holding the dried leaves of winter to come.

Some call them weeds, but they are verge survivors. Photo: PKR

And then, when the Winter Solstice (my favorite one) comes along and we are facing the prospect of dark mornings, early sunsets, and long chilly nights, there is the nascent seed of summer already there with the first day that is longer than the previous one. The promise of warmth at the other end of cold.

To my Twitter friend, I said we were in need of another kind of cake, another kind of comfort. So there’s this: The swing of the pendulum and the circling of the planet. The promise of constants and constant change.

The best part of this is, we can be that change, even as the days get shorter and the nights get longer. We can be getting ready for the next solstice when that process reverses.

The Jura Mountains during my morning run. Photo: PKR

Dried Acorns and Mirabelle Vodka

August 13, 2018January 3, 2019 / PK Read / Leave a comment

Of all the things dropping to the ground this summer, rain was particularly scarce.

The area of eastern France where we live is always hot in August. This year, though, after a rainy spring, June started heating up. And then July was hotter. As hot as August, but weeks early.

#wheat #wildcarrot #summer #sunshine #flowers #countryside #running #France

Wild carrot blooms along the verge of a wheat field just before harvest.
Photo: PKR

The minimal amounts of rain we got weren’t enough to keep the fields irrigated, so like other farmers around Europe in this hot season, our local farmers brought in the crop early to salvage what they could.

#harvest #summer #rain #countryside #running #France

The dry running path beneath gathering clouds.
Photo: PKR

The sunny mirabelle plums on our garden tree ripened weeks ahead of time, as did the wild blackberries all around the area. Tasty and delightful, but almost unseasonable in their timing.

The last two mirabelle plums picked from the tree, and a bottle of some plums from earlier in the season. They’ll steep in vodka with a sprig of garden thyme and some sugar for a few months.
Photo: PKR

Acorns, too, carpet my running path – they should be hitting the ground in late summer. Hopefully the squirrels and other animals have noticed the weird clockwork of this year, and are taking a cue from the farmers by harvesting early.

Out on runs, I sometimes hear the boom of thunder somewhere in the mountains, and I watch for signs of relief. Often, the skies cloud over, and I’ll see rain falling somewhere nearby – but only for a few moments, and only over a limited area.

Of course, it’s not that there haven’t been heatwaves in the past. But even in the twenty-odd years since we moved here, the heatwaves have gotten more frequent, hotter, and longer.

This week, the heatwave finally broke and we’ve gotten a few evenings of rain and wind. It’s a welcome change to listen to rainfall rather than the constant thrum of fans, because of course an old place like ours doesn’t have central air conditioning.

The stone walls were usually enough to take a few weeks of August heat and still stay cool inside. We used to be able to lean against them, bare skin on stone as a quick refreshment. Not anymore – the stones of our house are heated through and radiate inward.

A rain cloud brings a bit of relief.
Photo: PKR

Of course, we aren’t alone with our heatwave – it’s a phenomenon shared around the world this year. With any kind of luck, the slow climb of temperatures will come in fits and starts. With any kind of luck, we’ll have some time to take action, to adapt, to correct. With any kind of luck, a bit of luck will be on our side.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep using the luscious mirabelles for making plum vodka cordial, something to keep the winter nights warm once the heat has left the stones again.

Acorns picked up during a run.
Photos: PKR

Making The Rounds

July 16, 2018August 13, 2018 / PK Read / Leave a comment

People ask me how I don’t get bored running the same loop after over twenty years. Out the door, up the road that leads out of the village towards the Jura mountains, past the little château and then up through the fields that skirt the French border to Switzerland.

The loop is a little over 4 km (2.5 mi), and I usually do it twice. Most of it is along a gravel road that divides the local golf course from agricultural land, with views of the Alps and Lake Geneva to the east, and the Jura to the west. The river Rhône is at the heart of a V between two ridges directly to the south. How could these views ever become boring? Summer, autumn, winter, spring, they change with every week – loud with birdsong in the spring and summer, crickets in the evening and cows noisily grazing in the morning. Silence and snow in the winter.

When it’s not hazy, I can see Mont Blanc as if it’s within a short sprint. When the clouds and fog descend, I might as well be living in the plains.

Fallen harvest with the Jura beyond – this round bale clearly fell off the truck. The birds are picking it apart, day by day.
Photo: PKR

Earlier this year, I was out with a friend who grew up on an Austrian farm, and she pointed out another facet I hadn’t consciously noticed, even after two decades:

The local farmer (his farm is just past the château on the edge of the village) works all the surrounding fields here. He also has a herd of free-range dairy cows. What my friend noticed was just how carefully he rotates his crops, leaving many of the small fields fallow and grazed by the cows. The green spaces between the fields and the path are packed with blooming flowers, loud with the sound of busy insects.

Recently shorn fields, soon to be plowed and either left fallow, or planted with a new crop.
Photo: PKR

The fields rotate through various crops – clover, wheat, corn, potatoes, barley, rapeseed. “This is old-school farming,” she marveled. “This means he’s using less fertilizer, he’s letting the cows do the work in each fallow field, he’s taking care of the soil.”

A field clock of harvest and cows: One more thing to watch as the seasons and years pass and I make my rounds.

I met these girls just after they’d been herded onto a fresh field. The farmer had just closed the fencing and was marching away with his dog. The cows were still deciding whether this field was acceptable or not.
Photo: PKR

After The Rain, Before The Storm

June 4, 2018January 3, 2019 / PK Read / Leave a comment

The nightly storms that send rain pelting down upon our humble home and illuminate the sky with lightning are impressive. More surprising though, is waking up every morning to blue skies.

It’s not that we aren’t used to wild weather here in the Lake Geneva region; when you live between two mountain ranges, you expect thunderstorms to rattle the windows and drown out conversation.

Big clouds billow and march, rain and hail burst forth from balmy summer skies, winds change direction on a whim and another ‘orage‘ has made its mark.

Roses, pathway, mountains, after the rain

Sodden roses line a local walking path.
Photo: PKR

As I write this a couple of hours after my run in the sun, clouds are already gathering again, the air getting heavier, the wind picking up. Another storm is on the march.

But the weather we are experiencing isn’t limited to our neighborhood between the Jura and the Alps – half of Europe is counting the high numbers of lightning strikes as if keeping score. France saw almost 150,000 recording lightning strikes in May 2018, the most since the collection of that kind of data began in the early 2000s.

It’s not that we’re having more storms, it’s that the storms are having more of an impact. The average temperature in France for the month of May this year was a full degree Celsius higher than last year. Thunder and lightning storms feed on that kind of heat.

potato, crop, flood, rain, summer, running

A nearby field is flooded after the storms. I doubt the crop will recover from this kind of standing water.
Photo: PKR

As for the blue skies: At least where I live, every morning over the past week has dawned bright and shiny as a newly minted coin, as if all that noise over the past night belonged to some other country. Birds are singing, the critters are out, as if we’ve all agreed not to speak of the violent winds and rain. A large dragonfly followed me for much of my morning run, always just out of photo range.

erosion, running, water, thunderstorms, summer

I can only imagine how quickly the water must have been flowing to erode my usual running path overnight.
Photo: PKR

Flying ahead, settling, watching me approach, and then flitting off again, further and further away from any pond or river where it might normally live. Of course, the garden flowers are hanging and the glorious peonies of May are lost in aprons of pink petals on the ground.

More storms are predicted for the rest of the week…

mountains, running, summer, thunderstorm, rain

The Jura range behind our village, sunny after the thunderstorm.
Photo: PKR

Summer Field Moment

July 19, 2017 / PK Read / 2 Comments

I was out running yesterday and there was a cushion of sound, a papery hum, that accompanied me for a long stretch.

At first I thought it was the standard ambient noise of my run: a bit of mountain wind, shards of birdsong, maybe an underlying rush of water from the creek in the middle of the nearby forest (but only if it’s just rained). And then there’s the busy road at the lower end of our village, and the occasional plane above. It’s a familiar palette.

But this was closer, and I was pounding along and breathing heavily, so the soft crackle carpet of this sound took a while to push through to my awareness enough to make me stop and take a detour into the neighboring field.

I should have known all along. A field of rowdy insect song, full of hidden animals drunk on the heat of a summer morning.

So I thought I’d share it.

Another Harvest Moment

July 13, 2017 / PK Read / Leave a comment

Summer harvest continues in our village. How do I know?

I can hear the tractors. But even with the windows shut, I know a field of grain is being cut.

Look at that kettle of hawks, circling, waiting for the easy pickings of field mice in the newly shorn field.

Or maybe they’re just riding the thermals on a perfect summer day.

Summer’s Begun

June 21, 2015 / PK Read / Leave a comment

I always greet this day with a bit of wistfulness. It’s the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year, and it also rings in the season of days that grow ever shorter.

It seems like a good day from which to look at the year thus far, and the rest of the year ahead.

Happy solstice!

The solstice running path.

Redcurrant Cordial

July 6, 2014 / PK Read / Leave a comment

The cordial. A big bottle for the fridge, a small jar for gifting (well, there were quite a few of these, most of them already given away now), and a glass for the cook.

I’d had a romantic vision in my mind about making redcurrant cordial, something more in keeping with the word ‘cordial’. What I hadn’t anticipated was the 7 kilos (15 pounds) of redcurrants my single bush would yield under not very thorough picking.

The simple recipe (see below) became a more complicated logistical matter of our largest soup pot, two other large pots, stockings, and four hands. I completely failed at finding the picturesque muslin frame for draining fruit, or for that matter, finding any muslin in our rural area. Wine making tools, beekeeping equipment: no problem. Muslin and jelly frames? Forget it.

The simple notion of boiling a few redcurrants with water and straining them became a multi-step event that involved my partner in crime holding open a pair of (brand-new) knee-high stockings over a pot while I skilfully ladled large quantities of currant pulp into the waiting stockings. After two attempts and three skin burns, he stopped me.

What I didn’t have, but what I will be ordering for future cordial-making.
Source: Eatweeds

“Where are those weird potato peeling gloves your late grandmother gave us ten years ago?” The ones we’d never used until now, still fresh in their original packing, right under the sink where we parked them in bewilderment at what we would ever need them for. Thanks, Grammy! A few iterations later, the stockings were harnessed to the handles of the large soup pot, merrily straining the rest of the juices from the thousands of redcurrant seeds and bits of skin left behind. Sadly, I was too consumed in the making to document the picturesque sight of stockings filled with current pulp. Also, by that time it was almost midnight.

But the cordial is delicious – sweet, tart, full of summer flavor. Worth the effort. I made this Swedish version of the cordial from SwedishFood.com, but used a bit less sugar than called for because I like the tartness of the fruit.

Ingredients

500 g (1 lb) redcurrants, 180 g (6 oz) fine sugar, juice from 1 lemon

1. Rinse the currants, leave them on their stalks but remove any coarse stalks.

2. Put the berries in a saucepan and add 120 ml (½ cup) of water. Bring to the boil and let simmer until the berries have burst (about ten minutes, much longer if, like me, you have several kilos worth of fruit).

3. Line a sieve with muslin (or use a stand as shown above) and strain the cooked currants. I don’t actually recommend knee-high stockings as a sieve, but they work in a pinch. Wear thick gloves if you are holding open the stockings.

4. Return the juice to the saucepan and add the sugar and lemon juice. Bring to boil and let simmer for 3 minutes. Remove any scum from the surface with a spoon.

5. Pour the hot liquid through a funnel into a sterilised bottle. (Sterilise by washing and then placing in an oven at 120°C (240°F, gas 1) for 5 minutes.)

6. Cool.

We’ll be mostly drinking the cordial mixed with sparkling water, champagne or prosecco (at a ratio of about 1:8) but it can be used in salad dressings, poured over ice cream, frozen, or added to hot water for a refreshing hot drink.

Green & Red Bounty, Unfurling

June 23, 2014 / PK Read / 1 Comment

A zucchini froth blossom.

A few shots from the garden as it grows. I don’t have much of a green thumb when it comes to the kitchen garden, but watching each vegetable flower and then grow round has been a pleasure.

The first tomato.

A long vine with tiny potimarrons, my favorite pumpkin for autumn soups and pies.

The tiny tendrils that seem to grow and grasp for a secure hold before my eyes.The gooseberry is weighted down with fruit – it’s from the old garden, one of the only soft fruit bushes we kept through the most recent renovation because it just seemed so happy in its spot. I haven’t yet decided what to do with all the fruit. Jam? Jelly? A gooseberry cordial? The most undemanding, reliably productive plant in the entire garden.The cherry tree, which was barren last year, bears the best crop we’ve ever had. Too sweet to preserve, we’ll just have to pick and eat as many as we can and give the rest away.