Category Archives: agriculture

Esthetics and Agriculture

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We made at least two wrong turns getting to the mountains last month, and they helped put me in touch with my farming roots. In the middle of August the fields are lush with the bounty that gives California’s Central Valley the name of The Greatest Garden in the World. Tomatoes, corn, cotton, walnuts, tree fruits, grapes… Wikipedia says that every non-tropical crop is grown here.

On our second meander, in the northeasterly instead of southeasterly direction, we were surprised to see fig orchards on one side and pomegranates on the other. What could be more exotic or impossible? William Saroyan describes the impossibility in his 1930’s story “The Pomegranate Trees” that Mr. Glad and I have laughed over a few times:

 

“My uncle Melik was just the worst farmer that ever lived. He was too imaginative and poetic for his own good. What he wanted was beauty. He wanted to plant it and see it grow. I myself planted over one hundred pomegranate trees for my uncle one year back there in the good old days of poetry and youth in the world. I drove a John Deere tractor too, and so did my uncle. It was all pure esthetics, not agriculture. My uncle just liked the idea of planting trees and watching them grow.

“Only they wouldn’t grow. It was on account of the soil. The soil was desert soil. It was dry. My uncle waved at the six hundred and eighty acres of desert he had bought and he said in the most poetic Armenian anybody ever heard, Here in this awful desolation a garden shall flower, fountains of cold water shall bubble out of the earth, and all things of beauty shall come into being.”

Melik plans to have apricots, peaches, figs and olives too, but he never gets beyond planting the pomegranates, which eventually fail, because instead of a fountain there is only a trickle of water flowing from the many wells he digs.

Fig orchard in Madera Co.

But since the 1930’s, state-funded irrigation projects have increased the available farmland to such a degree that in the present day about one-sixth of the irrigated land in the nation is in our Central Valley. The pomegranate trees we saw with their ripening red fruits were not far from where the fictional Uncle Melik farmed.

I do think there is nothing more lovely than a fig tree with its extravagant leaves on curvy branches, and fruits more refreshing than a cup of cold water. Though I grew up in the Valley this was my first sighting of a groveful. I didn’t notice what kind of irrigation system is used in the orchard, but no doubt there was one.

View of Sierras from Tulare County (Pippin pic)

By means of our state water projects we take all that melted mountain snow pack and hold it behind dams so that we can let it out bit-by-bit all through the summer. In this long agricultural center of the state, on less than one percent of the total farmland in the United States, we produce 8% of the nation’s agricultural output by value. (Wikipedia)

Tulare Co. in Spring – still green in places

I’ve been googling to find out how many dams are in California, but that list is too long for me to take the time to count. Maybe I’ll just stick to the ones in the Sierra Nevadas that end up feeding canals and rivers that water orange groves and almond orchards and alfalfa fields. It turns out that list above is sortable, and I can see that in Fresno County alone there are eleven dammed lakes.

When you drive across the state, from a dammed mountain lake to San Francisco Bay Area in one day, the repetition of scenes along the highway impresses on you the importance of water. There are dead almond orchards on Highway 5, on the “West Side” of the Valley, that testify to water wars still going on, and to our inability to grow very much without irrigation.

Westside tomato field in April

It was 101° as we headed home through that fertile swath. All the crops whose irrigation was current were happy. The corn was probably growing inches every day, and the almonds swelling in their shells. We were happy to look out from our car through the windows that were closed to keep in the cooled air.

A little north of the dead trees, on a slope above the freeway, a Hispanic family were systematically planting new almond trees. It dawned on me that Why, yes, it is a week day, a work day, isn’t it? Not all the farm work can be done in the cooler mornings or evenings.

I recalled my sweaty and tanned father getting off his tractor, coming into the house mid-afternoon with a watermelon and slicing it into rounds at the kitchen counter. He’d put one big slice on a plate and eat it with a fork before going back out to take care of his orange trees.

Water melon. Melons are some of those things of beauty that Uncle Melik likely envisioned as he was trying to find their necessary water. And the people who tend the earth’s gardens, who are willing to build the dams and plant the trees and irrigate them all summer long are beautiful to me, too.

The house where my father ate watermelon.
Gardening requires lots of water – 
most of it in the form of perspiration. 

~Lou Erickson

Green and Lively Maryland

agriculture, family, food and cooking, nature, travel, , , ,
old and young feet

We’ve been living in the Maryland countryside for two weeks now, and only today did I have enough time to start a post here, time to even think of writing more than a shopping list.

We’re taking care of four grandchildren while Pearl and Nate are abroad. They are energetic and happy-family-robust kids between the ages of  eight and fifteen, who should help me stay young if they didn’t make me feel so old and tired by comparison.

The heat and humidity are enervating as well, though today when I was driving (alone, for the first time) a road that curves along under tall leafed-out trees and with lush bushes and vines on the borders, I was able to contemplate the agricultural resources of heat and humidity and summer rains. I stopped along the way at one of the numerous produce stands to buy big peaches and some squash, and drove into the driveway past the neighbors’ hibiscus with dinner-plate blooms.

a Natchez berry

Last week in preparation for Mr. Glad’s birthday we all went to the berry farm to pick giant thornless blackberries in stark contrast to the little wild things we usually have to pick for hours to make a couple of pies. We had more than enough berries in about twenty minutes, but it didn’t feel right to us, to pay with so little time, so we picked some more, and ended up with more than enough for three big pies that I spent most of the next day baking.

Mr. Glad fell in love with a German striped tomato at the farm store, so we brought it home for the dinner.

 

 

It filled two bowls and served the whole family deliciously.

That day Aunt Kate and Uncle Soldier came to celebrate with us, and their youthful energy was very welcome. Some of that energy went into making sushi for the birthday guy.

sushi

Lots of things are different here in the East from what we see on the West coast. A groundhog wandered across the lawn yesterday, a huge creature that we had only seen in “Groundhog Day.” And Mr. Glad found a large butterfly that was new to us. Fireflies and cicadas liven up the back yard in the evenings, when the temperature drops a little and we can actually stand to be outside with them.

Neither of us had been on the sort of Atlantic beach where people play and swim in the summertime, so we made the effort of a long drive to Fenwick Island State Park in Delaware and the grandchildren loved it. It had been a while since their last experience of the ocean and some of them had listened to many scary jellyfish stories in the meantime. The lifeguard told us that those unpleasant creatures aren’t a problem until the ocean water has been warm for a few weeks, usually not until mid-August.

We also loved being able to really relax in the warmth of the sand and sun — nothing like our local beaches back home. We wished we had more time for playing in the waves and watching the exuberant and laughing body-surfers we had brought with us.


The children are off in four different directions today, one of them with his grandpa down in Washington, DC checking out the sights there. It’s the first day I have had time alone other than a few minutes before falling asleep at night, and it’s been the most healthful thing. I feel like an olive tree that’s been getting a little too much fertilizer for about two weeks, and suddenly has a day with just water and sunlight. I may be old for a tomato, but olive trees live on and on.

 

Maui Diary 8 – Durian, Soursop, and Rambutan

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ice-cream bananas

The Ono Organic Fruit Farm was a laid-back place after all. We were a half-hour late for our tour of this farm south of Hana, and it didn’t really matter; others were even later than that. So the staff gave the second part first, to those On Time, and we tardy folk just had to stay around longer if we wanted to walk around to see and learn about the trees and bushes.

The main event was the fruit-tasting, for which we sat on an open-air porch before a table spread with a collection of tropical fruits. The young married farm interns chose one after another of the fruits and cut them into pieces to pass around to our group of twenty or so, giving us commentary all the while about the business operation, the agricultural practices, and what they knew of the individual species.

Being the daughter of a fruit farmer myself, I was full of questions about the cultivation or the fruits, many of which the fairly green farmers weren’t able to answer.

That was o.k. There were plenty of other specific things and facts on which I could focus my mind and my camera, and in this case, with those particulars being so strange and new, it’s was terribly stimulating.

This farm makes most of its income from bananas, including the more commonly found Williams variety, of which the kind we eat here is a type, and also the Red Cuban Bananas and Ice Cream Bananas. But oh, what a lot of other goodies they grow.

Soursop

I was intrigued by the soursop, which is a plant related to the chirimoya and the pawpaw. It was tasty but not overly sweet, and had a sherbet-like texture. In fact, it is used in tropical climates to make sherbet or refreshing drinks.

We were told not to eat the seeds, so I picked several out of my chunk of fruit, very smooth and black seeds that begged to go home with me, so I put them in a scrap of paper towel in my purse.

Later on I’m pretty sure I transferred them to my suitcase, but by the time I unpacked back home in my bedroom, they were nowhere to be found. I’ve been sad ever since, but Mr. Glad is actually glad that I’m not planting a tree for nothing. It wouldn’t be for nothing to me, but it certainly would be without fruit.

Scooping Passionfruit

We ate some of the passionfruit shown above, and later bought jars of lilikoi jam that had been put up just that morning from a variety of passionfruit grown there on the farm. The red fruits in the foreground are Surinam “cherries,” a pretty sour, but juicy, experience, not anything like a true cherry.

Those mangoes they grow on Maui might have been our favorite fruit of the trip — they seemed exquisite compared to the Mexican ones we are used to here. I always love coconut, and the pineapples we ate on the farm and elsewhere on the island were the Maui Gold hybrid, low-acid and amazingly sweet.

rambutan or dragon-eye fruit

One time years ago I had read a long article about durian fruit, and always took it as a given that no one would ever even gently suggest that I eat some — but there it was right in front of me, an opportunity to overcome my stodginess and pretend to be a daredevil. Trying strange foods is not my idea of fun, and durian may be the strangest of all.

ornamental pineapple

You may know about durian, that in several countries of the world it is illegal to carry it on public transportation, because of its aroma — or stink, as it seems to those who get physically ill over it. Other people get downright addicted to the fruit, and travel the globe following the durian harvest.

cacao fruit

I ate it and survived. In case my readers have the chance to taste durian sometime, I won’t say too much about it, except that it did not seem like a fruit. It was not juicy; it was soft; it had sulfuric components….The interns said that the piece we sampled was fairly mild tasting. It didn’t make me sick, but neither do I have any interest in eating another bite.

I thought the fresh cacao seeds would be bitter, like the roasted beans, but it was more pleasant than that, a vaguely chocolatey and unsweet, soft crunch.

Maybe because our tasting had begun late, the walking tour afterward seemed to pass way too quickly. I was constantly lagging as I tried to get pictures of macadamia or cashew or breadfruit trees.

One common tactic of organic farmers is to interplant different crops, so that pests and diseases don’t spread too easily. Here at Ono Farms coffee bushes often grow in the shade of banana trees.

Our visit was all close to the ground, but on the wall above the heads of our hosts was this aerial photograph, showing how bananas were planted years ago to spell out the name of this place where our senses were flooded with tropical flavors. The growers were right when they named their farm: in Hawaiian Ono means delicious.

Sunshine Bounty

agriculture, church, food and cooking, friends, winter

Our neighbor Elizabeth stopped Mr. Glad and me as we were walking past her house and gave us these lemons that she had just picked.

Citrus fruits are like a long-term investment that God makes on our behalf, pouring light and heat into the fruits over several months, then rain for another while, as we work and play through Spring and Summer and Fall.

Then comes the time of year when light is weak and slant. We need extra vitamin C in our diets, and some color in our field of vision. Well, aren’t we lucky. The activity in the account we probably weren’t thinking about bears a dividend of sunshine.