Category Archives: agriculture

Collis thinks on the land.

agriculture, quotes, , ,

The author of The Worm Forgives the Plough finds that hoeing is a fairly pleasurable sort of farm work, writing of it, “I have never since had a combination of similar qualities for softening the blows of monotony.” And yet…

This job, and the previous ones, brought me up against one of the fallacies concerning agricultural work held by the citizen of our mean cities. It is supposed that ‘on the land’ you have ‘time to think’, and that conditions are such that the mind can indulge quietly in wise expansive meditations in the open air. Certainly the place to think is the open air. But not during work.

To be able to think consecutively about anything you must concentrate, and there are few jobs on the land that you can do so automatically as to be free to really think. Perhaps hoeing should be one of these. For a short time it is. Then the body interferes with the mind. The back begins to ache. You become physically preoccupied. You become tired. And then the mind, instead of being able to concentrate upon something consecutively, indulges either in fatuous daydreams or nurses petty grievances or dwells upon the worst traits of one’s least pleasant friends.

At such times I have often been appalled at my mind and wondered if others could have such rotten ones. And if a Great Idea does descend, well, I stop working to take it in, and rest on my hoe, and look across the land (as a matter of fact, I don’t: I carefully gaze on the ground in case anyone is looking — for he who gazes towards the earth presents a less agriculturally reprehensible spectacle than he who looks toward heaven).

–John Stewart Collis in The Worm Forgives the Plough

Man-witha-hoe Millet
Jean-François Millet, Man With a Hoe

Collis in the potato field.

agriculture, quotes,

To support his country’s part in World War II John Stewart Collis wormasked to work in Britain’s Land Army. “Since it was clear to me that I would be given some home job for which I should be entirely unfitted, I asked to be excused in favor of agriculture.”

While he did quite a bit of forestry work as part of this commitment, The Worm Forgives the Plough is the book that tells of the subsequent farming experience, and that is what I am currently reading.

Though I am the daughter of a farmer, I think my only direct farming experience was to pick lemons a few times and drive a tractor a few yards at a time between the rows. Until I had my own patch of ground to become acquainted with after I married, I was somewhat like Collis, more linked to academia than to the earth.

It’s always a pleasure to find someone who is able to write, and who wants to write about farming. Reading him I am reminded of Victor Davis Hanson, another member of academia who is also a true farmer, and can articulate the practical matters and heart’s realities that perhaps most farmers just deal with, often silently. Coming “from outside” he also has a perspective slightly broader that can appreciate the humor and relate farm work to life in other parts of society.

Even though reading about the land and agricultural work will never replace actual participation in that process, I want to post some of my favorite passages from Collis as I vicariously join him on the farm. Here’s one:

I had only been working on the land a question of weeks, but one morning as I went past the potato field I realized with what fresh eyes I now could see a field, this field. It was no longer just a bit of earth the beauty of which I perceived from the outside. I saw it a hundred times more clearly, it was a hundred times more real. For I had sown it with potash and superphosphate. I had walked up and down it endlessly. I had counted the minutes nearer the midday meal, I had tried to plough it, I had put down potatoes in the furrows. Already I was no longer an onlooker, a spectator, excluded as if by excommunication from its factual and actual existence. I no longer hung in the void, but had entered in at the door of labour and become part of the world’s work in its humblest and yet proudest place.

About this pumpkin…

agriculture, family

This very day a record-breaking pumpkin weighed in atpumpkin 1 ton + Half Moon Bay 14 the contest in Half Moon Bay in Northern California. It weighed 2,058 pounds, which is not even as big as the world record set yesterday in Germany. But it currently holds the record for the heaviest pumpkin in North America.

Mr. Glad and I certainly haven’t been keeping up with the pumpkin competitions. I only heard about this one on the classical radio station on the way home from the dentist this afternoon, and I don’t recall news of another pumpkin recently. But now I have learned that until last year no one had broken the one-ton barrier, and about 15 years ago 1,000 pounds was the biggest you could expect in a prize pumpkin. What can they be feeding them nowadays? Or maybe it’s the hybridizing of the seed.

K pumpkin 1998Only once did anyone in our family enter a contest like this; it was Kate in ’98, and in this picture she is smiling in spite of the fact that I had stupidly broken the stem of her potential prize before it was half-grown. You are supposed to move the fruit to a pallet when it is small, and let it grow huge there, so it will still be easy to transport if it gets to be a few hundred pounds.

What I didn’t anticipate was the way the stem when lying on the damp soil is likely to send down roots, and Kate’s had done just that. The roots were stronger than the stem, so Snap! it went, and “Oh, no!” I went. I never could figure out how she could be so philosophical about it. She loved her pumpkin anyway, even if it wasn’t any good for entering the local contest. Probably it never turned orange.

These giant pumpkins are all very well and good — I guess. They are freaks, though, aren’t they? That prize-winner in the photo reminds me of Jabba the Hutt. They must be good for feeding to livestock, but in general I think that smaller is better. No tasty sugar-pie pumpkin would care about getting so big it couldn’t even squeeze into the kitchen.

lemon trees and cake

agriculture, food and cooking, ,

lemon cake 7-27-14My father scorned Meyer lemons. Growing his own lemons made him, and all of our family, partial to the intensity of a Normal Lemon. If anyone wants to give me lemons, Meyer or otherwise, I will never turn them down, but I also prefer what I grew up with.

P1100832

 

When I cook with lemons I usually think of my father and our trees. If as I child I ever found my father lying on the living room floor it was not because he’d been wrestling with my brother, but more like he’d been wrestling with those trees. During pruning season he’d invariably put his back out doing that necessary work on our ten acres (We had twenty more acres in oranges.) That would be more than a thousand lemon trees.

I learned to drive a tractor before I was old enough to drive a car, because Daddy needed me to pull a trailer between the rows when my sisters and I were picking the second, smaller crop of lemons that wasn’t worth hiring a whole picking crew for.

In those pictures that I retain in my mind, my brother wasn’t old enough to buckle down and help yet. He was sitting under a lemon tree crying, and the dust mixed with his tears to make a miserable face.  I must say that he’s more than made up for it in the years since, and is one of the most buckled down and hardworking people on the planet.P1100844eggs

The latest thing I cooked with lemons is this meltingly appealing cake, which Mr. Glad requested for his birthday last month. That he wanted cake was very strange, because it’s been Blackberry Pie as long as anyone can remember, and a good month to be born if you want that. But I was happy to oblige with the cake, and I devoted most of one Saturday to making it, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the process.

In the past I’d only baked this glazed cake for tea parties that I used to have in a bygone era. Now that it’s been revived in my repertoire I’ll want to make it more often. It uses a lot of lemons in the form of juice, and in this recent case, even more fruits to get enough lemon zest to impart the deep lemony flavor. It can be made up to three days ahead and freezes well.

Lemon-Sour Cream Cake

INGREDIENTS:

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large or extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon minced lemon zest
2 teaspoons lemon extract
1 cup sour cream

The Glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup strained fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely minced lemon zest

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 9-inch lightweight Bundt pan. Sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder together into a medium mixing bowl. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, or in a food processor fitted with the metal blade, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in the eggs, minced zest and lemon extract and mix for 2 more minutes.

Reduce the speed to low or pulse with the food processor. Add half of the flour mixture and mix until well combined. Add half of the sour cream, mixing constantly, then add the rest of the flour and sour cream, ending with the sour cream.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and remove the pan. Make the glaze while the cake is still warm.

To make the glaze, using a fine-meshed strainer, sift the powdered sugar into a small, non-aluminum bowl. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and whisk to break up lumps.

Transfer the cake to a rack placed over a rimmed baking sheet lined with wax paper. Using a long skewer, poke holes in the cake at 1-inch intervals, almost going through to the bottom. Slowly pour the glaze over the cake, giving it time to absorb as you pour. Let the cake cool to room temperature. Cut into wedges and serve.

Every time I make this cake, about 1/4 cup of the glaze ends up on the baking sheet under the cake, and would be wasted and washed down the drain in all its precious lemonzestiness if I didn’t find a way to use it. This time I whipped some heavy cream and slowly drizzled the syrup into it at the end when it was getting nice and thick. I froze the mixture in custard cups, and ate one of them the next day. It was quite delicious!