Prudent Seasonal Abundance

We had nearly an inch of rain on Thursday, then the first Fall-like day arrived in my part of the Heartland on Saturday. A temperature in the 40s announced it when I woke up Saturday morning and decided it had been a mistake to leave the windows open overnight. T-shirts and flannel layers topped with a fleece suddenly became very much in vogue around here.

The rain and cool temperatures combined to bring the green spinach sprouts out of their shallow hiding places and into the sun. The cover crop oats, barely showing before, took the moisture as great encouragement and grew two inches overnight.

The tulip poplars (our state tree) have been mostly yellow and gold for a week, their leaves littering the ground all around the garden. Sugar maples seem mostly yellow this year, and the dogwoods began with bright red berries among green leaves but have now gone over to dull red leaves. Sumacs gave away all their positions along the limestone outcrops with their scarlet spikes. The hickories, beeches, and ironwoods will follow with colorful outfits very soon, and then the oaks will reluctantly give up for the winter, going over to dull brown, then bare branches altogether. Soon the dull grays and dry browns of winter will reign, but for the next few weeks we will drink in a glorious Fall.

We will also have the opportunity to consume other things in excess. The sweet corn and green beans peaked back in August and September, and we ate lots of them then. That puts me in mind of a little historical, cultural, and culinary retrospection.

Back in the old days, and I mean the really old days, when every body was eating organic food all the time, if they could get any food at all, diets were different. The basis of the first agricultural revolution was sedentary agriculture that could produce enough surplus grains to allow populations to stay in the same place year-round without starving before the next harvest. It was one of the great turning points in human history, marking the start of the break from hunter-gatherer and nomadic cultures to new ones that stayed put. In time, civilizations emerged from groups of cultures along great river valleys like the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile, and the Indus. The surplus was the key to it all. Surplus means more than could be eaten right away. With a surplus and a way to store it, there could be a steady supply of food all year. Cereal grains like barley, wheat, oats, sorghum, and rice became more than porridge, too. There developed naan, yeast bread, noodles, pancakes, scones, pumpernickel, sandwiches, is it time to eat again?

But eating porridge every meal got a little tiresome. It’s better than starving, mind you, but still boring. What else could we grow here in the sandy river plain in this heat? Yeah, maybe it’s still 3,000BC and we have scratch plows and heavy hoes, but some variety would be nice! First there was beer made from grain, a considerable delay to recover from that discovery, then with the help of other cultures, mankind developed crops like figs and dates, grapes, wine, olives, and olive oil. Fats taste good! Herding cultures produced goat and sheep products, cattle products, dairy products like cheese and yogurt (fats taste good!) and many others.

Vegetables got an early start, too, with onions, garlic, beans, cucumbers, carrots, and artichokes going way back. Okay, artichokes are pretty weird, but the Greeks liked them. It figures. From the new world came tomatoes, potatoes, corn, squash, avocados, and peppers. With luck and decent rain and a little boost from the ag colleges before things got all chemically in the 1950s, we can now count on year-round abundance with most foods.

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The trouble is that all foods don’t ripen or mature at the same time. Some will keep, and some can be stored, but if you’re like lots of folks who want to grow as much of their own food as possible, or if you like to graze at roadside produce stands and farmers’ markets, there’s a problem that develops. The problem is seasonal abundance.

The ancestors got through it. When they had plenty, they ate it. When they had little, they ate that. When the herring boats came in, everybody stuffed themselves with herring. When the dried cod arrived, everybody ate dried cod daily. When the oats turned gold, it was back to oat cakes and porridge

All gardeners try to bring out the first tomato and the first sweet corn. These days the sweet corn comes in first, and when it does, the market will bear a high price because we’ve been waiting for it for the last eleven months. When the first bag comes home, it disappears quickly after just a day or two. Even if the price is high, nobody cares because sweet corn is just that good. Make another potful and we’ll get more! So for a couple of weeks, we eat loads of it. We buy it by the multiple dozens or we go out in our own gardens and snap a few ears. With plenty of butter melted off the end of a stick and a generous dose of salt (salt, not salts!) we don’t mind at all having it stuck in our teeth. It’s worth it. Overconsumption continues for as long as the crop keeps coming in.

Then the tomatoes are ready. We start having salads every night with plenty of tomato. We slice them and use lots of bacon making BLTs. We put diced tomato on pizza and pair more tomatoes with cottage cheese. We eat them for snacks and because we think they’re good for us. Then it’s green beans. Then it’s onions or potatoes or zucchini. The zucchini is ridiculous. Even if I pick them every day they’re soon coming out my ears. I eat several small ones every day, but a few plants replace those easily and grow a dozen more every day. Soon it’s two dozen every day. Then I stop caring how many there are and just let the darned things do whatever they want. I’m sick of them by now, and then the butternut squash comes in. This year I’ve developed several new ways to prepare and enjoy my favorite winter squash, but don’t worry, there will still be plenty left when March rolls around, even if I’m looking a little more orange than I usually do. Maybe the dog will help me! Then there are apples and blackberries and persimmons.

Butchering time brought its own set of dilemmas. If you’d just ganged up on a wooly mammoth or an auroch or a giant bison, there was plenty of meat to be had. Okay, okay, they killed the last auroch in 1627, so that one hasn’t been a problem for a while, and those other giant beasts must have made for some major feasting, but the problem of seasonal abundance was a serious one before mechanical refrigeration and some kind of cartage to move the carcass. Home butchering is best done in cold weather when the temperature will help chill the meat and delay spoilage, too. 

Still, slaughtering an animal of any size means there’s some urgent eating to do, even now. In warm weather, only a frenzied effort to consume it all, a smokehouse, and/or a freezer can adequately deal with the great abundance. One of my favorite phrases growing up was “Somebody better eat this before it spoils!” Oh, well! Guess I better do my part! Wouldn’t want 50 pounds of whatever this is to spoil! The grown-ups would remind us, “Children in China would be glad to have that!”

We came from people who were usually lucky enough and hardworking enough to have experienced seasonal abundance. Looks like they ate their way through it all, leaving us to copy the idea.

Our ancestors way back hoped for seasonal surpluses and often got them. As crops improved and multiplied, the gaps between harvests narrowed so that we didn’t have to worry so much about starvation like they did. Now we are confronted with too many calories because the industrial revolution reduced our worries but made it easy to expand our waistlines.

I’m here to say that taking advantage of the seasonal bounty is likely a good thing. There is time between each bumper crop to begin to wish for the next one. It’s a problem, but I can think of worse things.

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