The Harvest Continues Into The Dark Of Fall
Ever since moving to Oregon I've felt like life has changed in subtle ways. In ways it's difficult to articulate. Things feel closer to my skin here. The weather, the seasons, life, love, and the present, they all seem crisper. They feel sharper. Like I had been looking at everything through the wrong prescription lens and now I have healed sight. I keep trying to put my finger on it because living here is not at all like living in California. I can't help but wonder if what I'm experiencing is just what happens when you finally land in the place you're supposed to be?
This harvest season has, so far, been a wonderful adventure with my friend Lisa, and my canner. We've visited farms, saved her dried poppy seed heads, dried herbs, canned fruit, pickled vegetables, picked wild berries, dried cayenne, made huge pots of ratatouille, and ate lots of "nine dollar sandwiches". What I love about preserving food, about the harvesting of food at this season is that it connects me with the world I live in. Sure, I get to eat wonderful food in the winter and I get the satisfaction of being capable of taking one fresh thing and transforming it into something completely different. I get the satisfaction of working hard, which I enjoy. But most of all, most poignant to me, is that it always makes me feel as though I am tapping into the never-ending time line of human life.
I am all at once part of the present, where I am enjoying my work, and I am part of the past, connected to my farming ancestors who at this time would be doing exactly what I've been doing, and to the future, where humans must continue on in the persuit of life by harvesting food in the fall. When I'm peeling pears, it's almost as though I can feel the shadows of everyone else who's peeled pears before, who's peeling them right now, leaning through me. My mother peeled them, my grandmother, her grandmother, and so on. We are all doing this simple but vital activity. Always at the same season. There's a rhythm in it. A rhythm in the motions of human labor, working simultaneously, toward the same goal, during the same season, every single year. It sounds beautiful.
There are others going through the same rhythm in our lives. Lisa's husband Mark has been working almost non-stop for weeks now. He's in the middle of the grape harvest at the winery where he works. So while Lisa and I have been bringing home tomatoes, eggplants, and pears to process in bulk, I've been thinking about how Mark is doing the same thing. Only he doesn't get to rest. And he's part of a much huger machine, a machine so much more complicated than our small home productions. People sometimes die working during harvest. It's intense work, always, but this harvest has been one of the hardest. I can't help thinking about what they are working to achieve.
A sophisticatd beverage that people have been refining for a couple thousand years. At one end you have the arduous work of picking and sorting grapes (I've actually done this so I know for myself what hard work this is) and the crush, and so many other parts of the process that most of us never have to think about. At the other end you buy a bottle of wine to accompany your dinner and you pour it out, enjoy the ritual of it (or maybe just take giant slugs of it out of the bottle), and it's gone in a couple of hours. How often do people think about the backs that went out, the wives who have had to hold down the fort for six weeks while they haven't had two minutes to talk to their husbands, the lost sleep, and the sweat that goes into making that fine wine? I think about it. I didn't think about it before I started canning a few years ago. Before I started making a fine finished product out of harvested raw materials. Harvests do not wait on man's liesure. It's now or it's lost. It's agressively immediate.
What I've been thinking about today is how twisted it is that so many people take their food and drink for granted. That so many people go their whole lives without ever thinking about the person who grew their potatoes, without wondering about the people who worked their poor asses off bottling the ketchup they regularly waste on the side of their plates. I know that people are busy out their working at their careers, getting college degrees, reaching for dreams.
I know that not everyone can grow their own food or make their own jam, but absolutely every person should give thought to all the hard work others are doing on their behalf, work without which we would all die. Donald Trump may be real sad if his business tanks, but no one is going to die because of it. Some one has to grow our food. If we're not doing it for ourselves, someone else is doing it. It is one of our most fundemental needs in life. It comes before shelter, before clothes, before education, and before love. Food and water, (and obviously wine), are the most important things we will ever need.
So as I inhale the new sharp note of cold in the air and think about all that I have accomplished this season so far, I am also thinking about so many other people out there for whom this is a time of hard physical labor, of working deep into the night to produce something that will be savored later by others. I am thinking of all the farmers hauling in the last of the harvests, of all the food processing plants working their employees raw so that I can buy cans of tomato sauce this winter when my own stash runs out. I'm thankful for all that work being done on my behalf. The good life would not be possible without the harvest. So thank you Bernard's Farm, thank you Mark, Matt, Rassmussen's Farm, and to all the people who in their own homes and gardens are keeping our most important traditions alive.
*damn damn damn, I just couldn't write this piece as I felt it, there's something missing. I hate it when that happens. I'm going to publish it anyway, because I just spent two and a half hours working on it here in the store where I still can't sew. Can I blame clumbsy writing on buzzy florescent lights?
This harvest season has, so far, been a wonderful adventure with my friend Lisa, and my canner. We've visited farms, saved her dried poppy seed heads, dried herbs, canned fruit, pickled vegetables, picked wild berries, dried cayenne, made huge pots of ratatouille, and ate lots of "nine dollar sandwiches". What I love about preserving food, about the harvesting of food at this season is that it connects me with the world I live in. Sure, I get to eat wonderful food in the winter and I get the satisfaction of being capable of taking one fresh thing and transforming it into something completely different. I get the satisfaction of working hard, which I enjoy. But most of all, most poignant to me, is that it always makes me feel as though I am tapping into the never-ending time line of human life.
I am all at once part of the present, where I am enjoying my work, and I am part of the past, connected to my farming ancestors who at this time would be doing exactly what I've been doing, and to the future, where humans must continue on in the persuit of life by harvesting food in the fall. When I'm peeling pears, it's almost as though I can feel the shadows of everyone else who's peeled pears before, who's peeling them right now, leaning through me. My mother peeled them, my grandmother, her grandmother, and so on. We are all doing this simple but vital activity. Always at the same season. There's a rhythm in it. A rhythm in the motions of human labor, working simultaneously, toward the same goal, during the same season, every single year. It sounds beautiful.
There are others going through the same rhythm in our lives. Lisa's husband Mark has been working almost non-stop for weeks now. He's in the middle of the grape harvest at the winery where he works. So while Lisa and I have been bringing home tomatoes, eggplants, and pears to process in bulk, I've been thinking about how Mark is doing the same thing. Only he doesn't get to rest. And he's part of a much huger machine, a machine so much more complicated than our small home productions. People sometimes die working during harvest. It's intense work, always, but this harvest has been one of the hardest. I can't help thinking about what they are working to achieve.
A sophisticatd beverage that people have been refining for a couple thousand years. At one end you have the arduous work of picking and sorting grapes (I've actually done this so I know for myself what hard work this is) and the crush, and so many other parts of the process that most of us never have to think about. At the other end you buy a bottle of wine to accompany your dinner and you pour it out, enjoy the ritual of it (or maybe just take giant slugs of it out of the bottle), and it's gone in a couple of hours. How often do people think about the backs that went out, the wives who have had to hold down the fort for six weeks while they haven't had two minutes to talk to their husbands, the lost sleep, and the sweat that goes into making that fine wine? I think about it. I didn't think about it before I started canning a few years ago. Before I started making a fine finished product out of harvested raw materials. Harvests do not wait on man's liesure. It's now or it's lost. It's agressively immediate.
What I've been thinking about today is how twisted it is that so many people take their food and drink for granted. That so many people go their whole lives without ever thinking about the person who grew their potatoes, without wondering about the people who worked their poor asses off bottling the ketchup they regularly waste on the side of their plates. I know that people are busy out their working at their careers, getting college degrees, reaching for dreams.
I know that not everyone can grow their own food or make their own jam, but absolutely every person should give thought to all the hard work others are doing on their behalf, work without which we would all die. Donald Trump may be real sad if his business tanks, but no one is going to die because of it. Some one has to grow our food. If we're not doing it for ourselves, someone else is doing it. It is one of our most fundemental needs in life. It comes before shelter, before clothes, before education, and before love. Food and water, (and obviously wine), are the most important things we will ever need.
So as I inhale the new sharp note of cold in the air and think about all that I have accomplished this season so far, I am also thinking about so many other people out there for whom this is a time of hard physical labor, of working deep into the night to produce something that will be savored later by others. I am thinking of all the farmers hauling in the last of the harvests, of all the food processing plants working their employees raw so that I can buy cans of tomato sauce this winter when my own stash runs out. I'm thankful for all that work being done on my behalf. The good life would not be possible without the harvest. So thank you Bernard's Farm, thank you Mark, Matt, Rassmussen's Farm, and to all the people who in their own homes and gardens are keeping our most important traditions alive.
*damn damn damn, I just couldn't write this piece as I felt it, there's something missing. I hate it when that happens. I'm going to publish it anyway, because I just spent two and a half hours working on it here in the store where I still can't sew. Can I blame clumbsy writing on buzzy florescent lights?