Food for the Picking

(Photo by Bonnie D. Huval, copyright 2022)

In the midst of relentless news, it is still very much the season of free food in much of both of my countries.

Our blueberry crop is just finishing. Our plants are young, but they bore as much fruit as they could hold. We are just coming to the end of our tomato harvest in the greenhouse, too. Those plants thought they were the feature in Jack and the Beanstalk. My wife had to top them as they tried to go through the roof. Their stalks are like small trees and they bore tasty red waterfalls of plum tomatoes.

We’ve had strawberries, lettuce, spinach, chard, green beans, snow peas (mange tout), potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, carrots, chives, lemon balm (for a calming tea), herbs and perhaps more that I’ve forgotten. Much of this came from balcony boxes on our fence. For the sake of the dogs’ wild play sessions, our veggie patch is small and the greenhouse is of modest size.

(Photo by Antony Robinson at Scopio)

Drought is making damsons fall off the trees before they are ripe. Our garden-savvy neighbor Sue found that if she picks them just as they are about to fall and lets them sit on the kitchen counter for about three days, they finish ripening. She brought us some damson crumble.

We expected drought to make this year’s blackberries hard, dry and tasteless. Instead they are early, fat, juicy and more flavorful than usual. They are everywhere in the hedges. I filled a takeaway container with them for Sue and made a cobbler for us.

People who like slo gin will be happy to know those are ripening a little early too and look good. Apples and plums are coming along nicely. To our astonishment, we even have two apples apiece on the two apple trees in our tiny orchard of dwarf varieties, which we only planted in the spring.

We lent our food dehydrator to friends G & R, who are using it to make fruit leathers from wild bounty around their home. They have also made their own fermented tea from a plant that grows as a weed by country lanes. We’ve found some near us. We’re giving it a try too.

When I was a kid, I avidly read Euell Gibbons’ writing, especially his book Stalking the Wild Asparagus. (Disclosure: This is an affiliate link.) I was especially fascinated by his account of foraging a three-course meal in New York City’s Central Park.

We could rationalize by saying it’s a hedge against the rising cost of everything, or by saying this food reduces how much we need from the supermarket and leaves a bit more for someone else. But really, we do it for ourselves, for our sanity. He did. We do too.

There is something uniquely pleasing about picking fruit and vegetables ourselves. It gives us a sense of connection with the world around us. Somehow it soothes us. It feeds both body and soul.

So if the times are getting to be too much, you don’t have a garden of your own, but you are able to get out to a park, a roadside verge, a public green space somewhere… you might as well give it a try. At the least, it’s a nice outing. And you might come home with a container full of something tasty to feed you, body and soul. If Gibbons could do it in Central Park, so can you.