Category Archives: agriculture

Apples I Have Known – in a book

agriculture, books, family

Janet blogged recently about an apple-picking expedition, with photos that reminded me of excursions to the apple orchard that has been our family’s favorite vender for decades. We didn’t make it out there this year — yet.

The number of munching, saucing and pie-baking kids and grandkids that we had around here at times could consume quite a few bags and boxes of fruit during apple season, and our grower friend featured almost 30 varieties of apples, which kept his barn open to customers for a deliciously long time.

My daughter whom I call by the name of a favorite apple gave me a small book that is fun to peruse when the apple farm closes, or when there isn’t enough demand for fresh fruit in the house. It is all about various kinds of apples, with bright watercolors of those featured. Some old varieties, some newer.

Above is the Cortland that Janet is enjoying. If you want to read the text in any photo just click on the picture to enlarge it.

The Arkansas Black is one of that large selection on the local apple farm, and I have cooked with it many times.

Another friend and neighbor grew an orchard full of Criterions and sold gallons of the fresh juice out of his barn. Our older kids helped on the ranch, thinning the crop and such like, and no doubt these extra sweet and crisp fruits contributed to their good health.

Jonathans were a favorite of my father, as I discovered late in his life when I was given a boxful of runts. Late in the mountain season I sat in his cabin cutting up the fruit for applesauce, and he ate a dozen while youthful memories flooded his head.


And the Gravenstein — it’s got such a tang that as I write about it I start salivating. Its season is short, but there are plenty of orchards in our part of the country, and it adds the most appley flavor to whatever you cook with it. I have made many a curried apple turkey loaf with Gravenstein sauce.

I like the pictures of all the odd apples that I’ve never encountered, especially the sort of ugly knobby ones, or those with russeting or bumps, or elliptical shapes.

But my favorite apple of all, and naturally the best-for-me entry in this book, is one that was more available in stores when I first learned to bake pies. After using the same apples for many years, I have to admit that only Pippins make a pie that with my whole being I can rejoice in as Apple Pie. To prove my love, I am feeling a need to make a trip to Our Orchard this week and get a boxful.

California Mountains – Rivers and a Song

agriculture, nature, travel, , , , , ,

(This is the 3rd installment of my July vacation travelogue.)

Lake Tahoe sits on the California-Nevada state line, and the rivers in the surrounding mountains form the setting of the ballad “Darcy Farrow.” Ian and Sylvia were singing this song the first time I heard it, and I still think their rendition is the best. I heard many examples on YouTube while looking for one to post here.

As we drove down the highway south from the lake, we weren’t far from “where the Walker runs down to the Carson Valley plain,” and in fact we crossed all three rivers mentioned in the tale, the Truckee, the Carson, and the Walker. We even listened to Ian and Sylvia sing from the CD player at one point in our journey.

Of course I don’t like that Young Vandy put a bullet through his brain, but in comparing this story with other traditional songs I find I like it better than ones where the young man instead kills his beloved by accident or out of anger.

These rivers descend toward the east from from the northern Sierras and always refresh my mind as I watch them from the car. The Walker stays close to the highway longer than the others, and where it flows through desert-like terrain it captivates me by the contrast it gives to the sagebrush-covered banks. It’s fast and furious and carrying a lot of irrigation for the green fields of alfalfa grown farther east where the land flattens out. I recall those expanses of green and the beautiful Nevada cattle ranches in the shadow of the mountains — but we didn’t go that way this trip.

Four years ago we visited this area, and I wrote hasty notes in my journal as we sped along through ever changing layers of conifers, sagebrush, aspens and meadows, trying to preserve the moments of beauty. I didn’t get to catch my own photo of the rivers on either trip, but I found this one on the Web.

And below is one of ours, showing the mountains where the heavy snowpack from last winter is still melting and filling the rivers with icy water. On Hwy. 395 this far north the elevation is still above 5,000 feet so the summer temperatures don’t get extreme. The cattle looked content, and I know I was.

Cherries the birds didn’t get

agriculture, food and cooking

Thanks to blogging friends, I was prompted to take notice and learn about my food today. Strawberry Lady suggested we eat cherries, so naturally I took a picture first. The Rainier cherries I bought at a roadside stand this week in the land where we also grow asparagus, artichokes — and yes, strawberries! — were selling for $6 for a large basket, the same as Bings.

But in Japan, they have been known to pay for Rainiers (gulp) $5 per cherry…? And birds eat as much as a third of the crop before it’s picked, so they also must think they are pretty special.

Now I’m glad I bought the Rainiers and got such a good deal. The small hut with the big signs was just off a four-lane highway, and the trucks carrying all our luscious California produce were speeding by. As the wind blew me across the dirt toward the fruit it took all of one second for my hair to become a tangled web across my face, but I found my mouth and sampled both cherries — and that’s how it all happened.

I bought strawberries, too, Mags, but in this case,

They can’t compare
To the Rainier rare.

Journal of October Trip South

agriculture, family, nature, , ,

As we were getting ready to go on a weekend trip, I was more calm than usual, because we’d only be gone one night, then home again. And it appeared to be the last trip I would make for months to come. The occasion was a gathering with my sisters and brother, in a countryside place spread with orange groves. One brother and sister live within a couple of miles of each other, but with mailing addresses in different towns, and neither of them close to even a village. We drove south, instead of my more frequent northward to Pippin’s, but about the same distance, 5+ hours.

Mr. Glad and I stayed overnight with my brother, who lives in the house my dad built over 50 years ago, where I mostly grew up. This morning I got up early and sat in a big stuffed chair in the living room, tucking my feet under me the way I used to as a girl. The house feels so quietly solid. It’s a wood-frame stucco house on a concrete slab, and you never hear any creaks walking around the ranch-style layout. A big picture window looks out on the foothills that are dotted with oaks, and behind them shady layers of taller and taller mountains forming the Sierra Nevada. Curving grids of trees like dark green pom poms hug the lower slopes nearby. The first time I went home after living in Northern California for a while, I was struck with how short all the orange trees were, not even as tall as nut trees or peach trees, but certainly dwarfed by the Coast Redwoods and other tall trees we have up here where the rainfall is doubled.

The net effect is of a lush but flattish scene, house and orchards keeping close to the earth. The sky is bigger therefore. This October we got quite a bit of rain; all the autumn landscapes were more beautiful having been washed by the rains, making every tree and bush stand out brightly against the background of greening fields. I had my usual thrill of watching the cloud performances all the way down and up the center of the state. We saw black cattle grazing in a pasture, and in the middle of the herd, a white egret standing at attention.

Over a big dinner, we siblings talked about our mountain cabin and how to manage things as the new owners since our father passed it to us just over a year ago. We hadn’t all been together for more than a year, and we aren’t big phone or e-mail users, so we had a good time catching up. We always have to hear as well the news of our mutual old school and neighborhood friends, and the goings-on of the farming community there.

Some citrus crops are being picked already, by crews of Mexican farm workers. And olives are at the peak of harvest in the same general area. Cell phones have created changes in the way the picking crews operate. You might say they have created some degree of anarchy, or at least free-lance options that didn’t exist before. My sister Farmer Woman told us about how some growers were having difficulties getting enough pickers for the oranges, because they could make more money in olive-picking, at least until the frost cuts off that opportunity.

Because of the shortage, a crew was enlisted one day to drive down from the county to the north, in several cars. At least one car-full never arrived, because on the way someone got a call on his cell phone with a tip from a friend, that a different grower was paying $1 more per box, so they detoured that way. This sort of thing happens all the time now.

Dinner was over, and we were sitting lazily around a big table when Farmer Woman’s cell phone rang. The screen said it was her nephew, our Soldier, who was calling. As she talked to him it became apparent that he and Joy were in the area, too, having been to a wedding nearby. Neither of us had told the other that we were making a trip down there this weekend, so it was a pleasant surprise for everyone when they were able to join us for breakfast this morning, and a bigger family get-together than they had hoped for.

After that, they took off northwesterly, and we more to the north, but evidently we both wandered around the next city of over 100,000 population for a while, getting fueled up or something, because when we were leaving town, there we were driving alongside one another. Twenty minutes later, merging on to the interstate, we were right behind them. It was the kind of happenstance that would make a child happy, and it did me, too.

On the way home I read the Forward, the Introduction, and the Preface to a book by Leon Kass that I plan to write about at length later on. It’s philosophy, and as I had nothing much else to do, I could put the book down every few minutes and chew on the ideas. I read it two years ago and might need to read the whole thing again before I’ll be able to know and express why I love it so much.

Then I dozed for a while, and when I woke up my husband was playing parts of his iPod collection. I asked again, for the fortieth time, “Who is singing that song?” It was Police. So I worked on a mnemonic that would make me learn this fact for once and forever. They were singing, “There’s a little black spot on the sun today,” so I imagined that the black spot was a black Police car driving around. I watched them in my mind for a few minutes, and then on the iPod they were singing a different song, “Every little thing she does is magic,” very ardently, so I amplified my image so that the Police car driving over the sun’s surface was full of Policemen who were loudly singing these very words about a magical woman. I can’t lose it now.

Getting closer to home, I was more and more excited about the beauty of the world. Rows of eucalyptus trees form windbreaks here and there, and beneath them the colors of a dahlia farm don’t seem to have faded in the rains.  On the slopes in our county it’s the vineyards that catch your eye, and they are starting to turn gold and orange. Flocks of starlings were swooping like fluttered polka dots. I understand that they are eating insects as they do their dances. That reminded me of my book, which is about eating, nature, our souls, the unity of reality. There is a wholeness to life, because God in His Holy Spirit fills all things.

I guess that’s the reason I’m content to write about our trip without trying to find a theme for it. The entire weekend seems of a piece, a large piece of joy.