Hobby Horse

Friday, January 04, 2008

I’ve been thinking a lot about my hobby lately.  Food has really been my only consistent, center-of-my-life hobby for the past several years. 

Vegetables are certainly not a recent love.  Even when I was a single-digit youngster I ate my greens, my brussels sprouts, my artichokes, and almost everything else plant with glee.  When I was 12 or 13, I signed up (with five dollars of my allowance) for a community garden allotment plot around the corner from my folks’ house in Germantown. 

Both sets of my grandparents were avid gardeners: my grandfather in West Virginia going crazy in his kitchen creating Currazzy Jam with blends of his currents and raspberries; my grandparents in Welwyn Garden City, just north of London, with their paradise of a backyard – lawn for badminton and clothes drying, netted room for fruits, vegetables, flowers, apple tree, poplars.  My British grandfather liked to experiment too, planting corn in honor of his daughter’s adopted home in America.  When he planted asparagus, I remember running my hands along the tops of those beautiful ferny plants, soaking in the news that this is what asparagus looks like in the ground.  I wanted to be a farmer for a really long time, and so did M.  We’re now working on getting a bit of land in Germantown to build a house and grow almost everything we eat.

Sometimes I’ve been frustrated with how far I need to go in order to get where I want to be, and sometimes I’m amazed at far I’ve come.  For instance, my record keeping on our preserved items goes back to 2003, when we first adopted Amy Dacyczyn’s method (as discussed in The Tightwad Gazette). In the left column we list the preserved items and put the non-summer months across the top.  If we have 12 quarts of blueberries frozen, 12 xes get distributed across the months.  Then each time we use a quart, we cross off an x.  This keeps us from running out, but also from hoarding.  It’s such a treat to say, “Three quarts of blueberries this month!”

What strikes me from the first list is the focus on fruit (although no blueberries), and the lack of canned tomatoes, which we were still buying.  2004 has barely any notes, but by 2005 we have picked 17 pounds of blueberries (at Emery’s in New Egypt, NJ), and 128 pounds of tomatoes (at Linvilla Orchards in Media).  There are still only 13 items, but a column has been added to indicate if the food is organic.  Also, I list Emery’s, Linvilla, Willow Creek Orchards (near Collegeville), and our CSA as our sources of food.  In 2006, the variety of foods has expanded, but due to illness and vacations, the number of units of each food is minimal.

2007’s list is pictured above.  There’s a lot of variety, from strawberries to tomatoes to corn to sorrel, and our methods of preservation have expanded to include dried food and juice.  Also, there’s a nod to my American grandfather with “black and blue” jam (blackberries and blueberries) and, yes, grape crapple sauce (grape, cranberries, apples).  I’ve stopped using the column for organic, because most of the places we get our food now are organic, and we’ve decided local is a higher priority for us.

Our goal of eating only locally has sometimes seemed far away, but it’s easy to forget that once upon a time I didn’t know what “eating in season” meant.  I always understood that summer tomatoes were the best, but it didn’t occur to me not to eat the pink ones in the winter.  M and I don’t have children, and my time is limited only by my energy level, so eating locally has been a perfect hobby for me.  In the summer M and I go picking about three weekends out of four, and I usually go once or twice a month during the week.  Most of our summer spare time is spent picking, canning, freezing, drying, juicing, and, of course, eating, usually to the sweet sounds of Phillies’ baseball on the radio.  Every year I learn a little more, and every spring I hope to learn something new!