Life Preserved

This entry is dedicated to Pop Pop Brugger, who passed away last night at the age of 87. In addition to cultivating a gorgeous, highly notable, and well-photographed garden every year in the town of Bethlehem, PA and making the most delectable peanut butter eggs at Easter, my grandfather made impeccable jellies. There is a story of him going to pick strawberries just a couple of years ago when his physically weakening body had just begun to significantly limit him. Of course hand-picking fruit is essential for the best jellies. So upon arriving at the U-pick, he asked some of the employees to help him to his knees, where he remained until he was finished picking. Though my preserves pale in comparison to his, I can only hope to honor him by carrying on the tradition.

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Pop! Another jar assures me of a successful, spoilage-preventing seal. It’s night number two for canning just this week, and I’ll probably be preparing jars of jam again tomorrow night for the boiling bath. Later in the week, it’s the second round of tomatoes, maybe the last, for the season.

I just recently overcame my prohibitive apprehension of canning. Passive-aggressive germophobia previously deterred me from preserving produce in any other way than freezing. Of course last year I also wanted to spend minimal time handling fruits and veggies outside of farm work, but that was just an easy cover. In my mind, I considered a long list of hazards that would most definitely result in my contraction of—and eventual death from—the surreptitious pathogen that is botulism: non-sterile fruit, non-sterile countertops, non-sterile jars and lids, non-sterile canner, non-sterile air. And what if I did something wrong? What if the jars weren’t hot enough when I poured the ingredients? What if I didn’t remove all of the air bubbles? What if I didn’t screw the lids on fast enough after filling the jars?

I worried myself out of time and stored my newly purchased canner for winter, having never filled it with water.

It would have to be different this season—there simply isn’t enough freezer space. After consulting experienced canners about their method, I was convinced that the books telling me to use only flawless produce harvested THAT day (highly unlikely) and to process quarts of whole tomatoes for 85 minutes were perhaps simply covering their asses. A friend in Italy vividly described the old country way of canning tomatoes with large, open barrels sitting over fires. Was the Italian peasantry worried about a precisely even cooking surface or scraping every germ from the countertop? Of course not. I even came across a website that said that if you can boil water, you can can.

I disregarded all reservations and, enlisting Dylan, peeled and quartered some peaches. Taking our time, we filled the jars with the fruit and a light syrup, screwed on the lids, processed in boiling water for the prescribed time, then counted 6 pops after taking them out of the water: success! Now that I know how easy it is, I’m rolling like the boil, canning at least once a week during the past month.

Of course, I should be careful. I’m toying with a balance, and perhaps nearing the point when a heavier sense of duty plops on the seesaw, thrusting oh-so-light pleasure into a sphere of no return. My boss Jack, in his subtle way, warned me: “It takes a lot of time and energy. I used to take off work when I was younger to can until I wore myself out. Then I decided I wasn’t going to be a slave to my produce—if I grew it, I don’t have to feel guilty about letting it go and compost in the ground.”

His preservation philosophy makes sense, but right now I don’t have the luxury of losing a few dollars to rot or feed for the growing population of fruit flies in the kitchen. Most of our vegetables are free, but fruit is relatively expensive. And now is the time to ensure an adequate supply of local food for the long winter to come (as though I couldn’t possibly go to a store and buy food).

So here I am, on a Wednesday night, canning until 11:30 for the second time in a row. (Weekends are too busy, and that’s when I get the ingredients). I’d just begun Round Three of processing, having transitioned from easy-peasy peaches to a plum-honey preserves recipe. I needed to get through the plums since they’d been in the fridge for three days and were softening. But after a long day at the office and a late start in the kitchen, I was tired.

I paused from the tedious pitting and quartering of plums over a pot and looked at the clock. 10:30. All of this for two half-pints. A sigh. This is stupid, I let myself think. But I was too far along now to stop. I pushed on, finished the chunking, added the honey, and brought the contents to a boil.

What happened next was one of those rare moments in the kitchen when a right-minded person bows in adoration to the magic of chemistry and physics: Though I knew the heat would reduce the fruit, I could have never anticipated the royal color and aroma that arose. The plum skins bled garnet as pulp and liquid sugar fused with the transcendent aroma of harmony. I inhaled fervently over the rapidly boiling potion, now thinning into a translucent fuschia, lusting for a description that would do such godliness justice. You think I’m taking this is a bit far? No. The intoxicating smell transported me to a garden of waking roses, plumeria, and honeysuckle, ripe with dew.

Could I seriously be talking about jam? Yes.

Even Dylan—who claims to not love jams and jellies—widened his eyes with his first taste-test, saying, “Wow. That’s really good.” I hadn’t eaten dinner, but after indulging in my own spoonful, I sank with pleasure, which I surely would have missed had I simply purchased some plum preserves from the store.

I’m probably in for another five hours of processing tomatoes this weekend. But when I use the last jar to make the family sauce come February or March—with four months to go until tomatoes start ripening on local vines again—I’ll wish I’d done more.

PLUM HONEY PRESERVES

Adapted from Preserving Summer's Bounty, A Rodale Garden Book

Yield: Two half-pints

16 medium red or purple plums, slightly under-ripe if possible

1 cup mild-flavored honey (I used rich buckwheat, but it still turned out wonderfully)

1. Use a heavy-bottomed, 6- to 8-quart enamel or stainless steel pot, preferably one that is wider than deep. Pit the plums, and cut them into large chunks (no need to peel), working over the pot to catch the juices. Stir in the honey. Bring to a boil over low heat, stirring frequently.

2. When the mixture looks soupy, raise the heat and bring to a full, rolling boil. Skim off the solid white foam. Continue to stir slowly for 15-20 minutes. It will thicken further as it cools.

3. To can: Pour into hot, scalded half-pint jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Seal and process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath.

Sweet Corn Chowder to Stretch Corn Season | Edible Finger Lake Magazine - Local Food Magazine of the Finger Lakes

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Sweet Corn Chowder to Stretch Corn Season | Edible Finger Lake Magazine - Local Food Magazine of the Finger Lakes

A Cornish Slaughter

I slaughtered my first chicken on Sunday. "First" means it probably won't be my last; I was hardly numbed by the experience, and an aspiring homesteader in the Northeast should see any introductory chicken exposure as preparation for the future.

But let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I used to be a vegetarian. I read my first Peter Singer (renowned animal rights activist) when I was a sophomore in college, and it paralyzed me. How could you think of meat as anything other than murder? he asked (with fancier words). Maybe, once, for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, survival necessitated such crime. But now, with the bounty of agriculture, we have so much control over our diet that we can easily cut out meat without sacrificing that oh-so-important protein. And if you think you can evade the criminal accusation on the basis of your superior intelligence to animals, well then, you are simply unintelligent. For pigs are smarter than infants and even some mentally handicapped people, but we certainly wouldn't think it moral to kill them.

This is a gross oversimplification of his arguments, but he and many others have written books on the subject. The point is, Singer convinced me in a few pages that eating meat lumped me in the same evil category as first-degree murderers. And I wasn't okay with that. The next day, I became a vegetarian--forgive the pun--cold turkey.

Two years later, I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She devoted an entire chapter to an on-farm slaughter of turkeys that she had humanely raised on her farm, and she, too, prefaced her narrative with some context: Her entire family had practiced vegetarianism for 14 years! But in the late 90s, other issues like the slavery of migrant farm labor, the climate implications of methane-producing cows and food miles, and the rise of diet-related chronic disease called into question our food system at-large. The idea that ethical eating isn't just about whether or not you eat animal products was gaining momentum. Conscious consumption was becoming much more nuanced and holistic, much more about slow food--good tasting, environmentally friendly, fairly produced and accessible food.

Suddenly, when viewing the entire puzzle of food system reform, eating meat--the right kind of meat--didn't seem so unnecessary. In the spirit of a regionally appropriate diet, meat is unavoidable in many places simply because of climate: If you want to eat locally pretty much anywhere except the deep south or California, you're not going to survive the long, dormant-growing-season that is winter on potatoes, carrots, and beets. Sure, you could go to the store and buy some protein-rich meat alternatives like tofu, tempeh, or even canned beans; but what are the ethical implications of these foods? How many insects and mammals were sacrificed for the health of those soybean fields or rows of beans? And how much gas polluted the air during the transportation of those products from the field to dinner plate? And how much space is all of that wasted packaging going to take up in a bursting landfill? Barbara had asked all of these questions and resolved them by putting chicken (or turkey) back on the table.



I later read an argument in favor of eating good meat-- that is, locally and humanely raised--as an even better protest to abhorrent factory farms than not eating meat at all. As the author realized, we must come to terms with the fact that farmed meat isn't going to disappear because a handful of people decide not to buy it. So why not support the small farms doing it the right way? Ensuring their success provides consumers unwilling to give up meat with an ethical alternative.

And so, a mere two-and-a-half years after deciding I had no other choice for maintaining my moral integrity but to go veggie, I started eating meat--good meat--again. I have deemed myself a "conscious carnivore" (I'm still looking for something less pretentious, if you have any suggestions), and buy meat produced only on local farms that I know give their animals a good life.

Now it's time for the real story:

Thanks to industrial meat, on-farm animal slaughter can probably be considered a rarity in our culture (though common in many parts of the world). Aaron and Kara are two young farmers who decided to share with their friends the beauty in this unpopular manifestation of community food security. For me, and I think I can safely speak on behalf of all others there, being a part of this event was not about whether we could or could not kill a chicken. This was about deepening that connection between farm and fork and witnessing how the achievement of this understanding builds community at the same time.

On their small homestead just outside of Ithaca, Aaron and Kara humanely raised 42 Cornish Cross chickens for the sole purpose of meat. Through an email, they let friends know of the slaughter day and invited people to participate and purchase birds for $10 each. This price simply covered the costs of raising the animals. Rather than make a profit, their intent was to provide friends eager for a taste of small-scale meat production with an incredibly valuable and unique educational experience.

Aaron and Kara demonstrate the evisceration stage

When Dylan and I arrived, I felt like I was late for class. About twenty people were already huddled in a shady patch of mowed grass just above the long driveway. Behind a long table covered with cardboard, Kara stood beside Aaron who was in the middle of explaining each stage of the process. Between the teachers and students, there was a propane tank, a camping stove, and two pots filled with water . Several feet away from the table on either side were two trees each with a makeshift contraption that held in place a suspended traffic cone; the pointed end had been cut off, leaving a hole that faced the ground.

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After catching the tail end of Aaron's instructional overview, we joined the group on the first trip to the coop. The first kill neared, and I worried more intensely than I had during the day if I was going to be able to handle this. People photographed and filmed as Aaron and Kara collected as many birds as could be sandwiched in the two bins, then we returned to the station and gathered around the nearest cone. Everyone fixed their eyes on Aaron as he snatched one of the chickens by the feet, holding it upside-down as he rubber-banded the dinosaur legs. Then he placed the bird, now calmer, head-first through the cone, reaching his hand into the hole underneath to pull its head and neck through.

First, feel for the jugular and distinguish it from the trachea. Do not cut the trachea. When you find the vein, pull the feathers back, so you can make a clean cut. Use forceful pressure to rupture the vein on the first slit. Do not saw. Once you have cut one side of the neck, do the same on the other to quicken the death. After his words, Aaron acted, and I braced myself to watch for the first time the slaughtering of another being.

There was silence as that first slit stained white feathers red. The warmth of the blood was visible in the deepness of color that streamed into a bucket below. But people were quick to follow the action with questions, and this set the tone for the rest of the afternoon. Dominating intermittent moments of solemnity was an overarching wave of vibrant curiosity, like that in a science classroom filled with kids completing their first dissection.

And so the four-hour slaughter began. A few others had done this before, and, familiar with the process, were quick to dive in. Some of the brave amateurs stepped up, assigning themselves to a specific task or simply grabbing a bird from the bin. Many of us, myself included, were content to observe before doing anything. I watched as my friend Liz slipped an inverted bird through the cone and unhesitatingly moved the knife down one side of the neck. "Have you done this before?" I asked, intimidated by her confidence. "Awhile ago," she said. "But it still hurts." The animal faded as we stood quietly.

Gradually, those who had initially held back jumped in to find their niche. When I finally gained the confidence to say, "My turn," Dylan had already moved one chicken through the process and most people were engrossed in the routine of the stages. This and the technical difficulty of the task before me subdued any remaining moral considerations; I had made up my mind that I needed to do this, and so I had to force myself to focus on doing it correctly. Don't screw up, I kept telling myself. Don't cut the trachea. I enlisted the help of Chris (remember my former crew leader?) to guide me. Preoccupying my mind only with his instructions, I did it.

The ability to rationalize this killing as a necessity does not make the animal's death any easier. A few long minutes pass before the bird dies, which is plenty of time to remember its aliveness, look into its ever-more weary eyes, and question the humaneness of initiating this slow death instead of swiftly cutting off the head (rupturing the trachea apparently makes for tough, unpalatable meat because it violently tenses the muscles).

And I didn't even help with--though I witnessed--what I thought to be the most painful part: collecting the birds from the coop. This is the first step. Watching the birds noisily, frantically back away from a merciless hand as it reaches in for the next victim is a reminder that animals feel. They feel fear just as we do because they, too, know death. As we carried from the coop to the killing "floor" the next round of wrangled birds, I wondered whether their insides were knotting with anticipation. This is when the words of Peter Singer and the like begin to strangle your conscience like a grapevine. How can I kill something that coos so pitifully?

Scalding at a water temperature of 142 degrees Fahrenheit makes the feathers easier to remove

But once it's done, it's done. Having respectfully observed several somber minutes of spiritual contemplation and gratitude, you break from the suffocating grasp of the philosophical vine. With each of the following stages, the chicken's animal identity diminishes as it looks more like a hunk of edible meat--a welcome reminder that it lost its life for more than sheer curiosity. First the scalding, then the plucking, eviscerating (gut-removal), cleaning, and finally ice-bathing. The plucking was tedious, even with the help of other people, and the evisceration was almost chokingly technical. But with each step, I had the help of a fellow participant--both new and experienced--to see me through. Soon enough, my chicken looked ready for the roasting pan.

Though certainly not required or pressured, everyone took an active role in the slaughter. By the end, each person had killed at least one chicken. No one fell prey to squeamishness. And no one was overcome by the moral discomfort of the act. Surely everyone grimaced with ethical uncertainty when wielding the knife, as I had myself. But, as Dylan said, the fact that killing the bird made everyone cringe only enriched the humanity of the event as a whole.



We talked about all of these reflections at the end of the night when we closed the slaughter with a proper, shared meal made by our extraordinary hosts. Our slow food dinner featured--you guessed it--grilled chicken hearts. "It's the best part of the chicken," Aaron said. "They taste like really good hot dogs." He's right. But hot dogs aside, slipping a heart off one of the skewers being passed around our dinner circle and popping it into my mouth was the most perfectly symbolic tribute to our human and animal friends that I could have imagined. A mere educational experience transformed into a true communal ceremony.

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Having already expressed gratitude for the chickens, the only individuals left to thank before we left long after sunset were Aaron and Kara. As was the case with the chickens, words didn't feel like enough. If it hadn't been for them, I don't know when or where I would have had the opportunity to do this. As I reached to hug my friends and tinged my nostrils with the sour smell of soap and vinegar that failed to cover the lingering stench of chicken innards, I couldn't have felt more human.

Summer's Return

Did the rancid aftertaste linger these long six months since my last, gloomy post? Forgive me, please. My extended writing coma was, in truth, unintentional, and I had originally planned on following that last rotten nut with something a little crunchier and sweeter.

But anyone in the Northeast knows it was a rough winter. I guess we say that every year, but I felt it with every stiff bone, frozen nerve, and depressed brain cell in my body this winter--it's an eighty-degree night in July, and I'm still talking about it! As you may have guessed from my previous post, the transition from farm life into, well, real life was stormy. Literally. It seemed as though every other day snow cemented my 45-minute commute into an hour-and-fifteen-minute slither through treachery. The gloom was all-encompassing. Anything beyond going to work, making dinner, and crawling into bed--like blogging--was deemed too unnecessary in this time of death.

But enough excuses. My slow food senses have now fully reawakened with summer, and for the past month, I've savored the effort to reverse my post-winter (disgusting) rate of toxicity. Where's the raw produce??

Oh, there it is. In our garden. Not in our absence of a yard downtown, but rather at the Ithaca Community Garden. Receiving our plot confirmation in March was my first glimmer of light: Spring is near! We wasted no time buying the seed-starting essentials and fashioning as best a set-up as possible in our studio apartment. After a month, a decent number of blank spots remained in our seed trays--our system has plenty of room for improvement--but enough heads popped to plant half the space in our 15'X 15' plot. With some supplemental seedlings from farmers' market vendors, we took care of the gaps. We've been watching with empowerment our first personal garden bloom during the past six weeks. Already we've harvested plenty of herbs, lettuce, and spring onions.

We'll still be enjoying bounty from the farm too, since Dylan is working a second season part-time. Jealousy pinched a little when he brought home the first pint of strawberries, and I remembered the glory of a bloated stomach after a day of endlessly picking/endlessly eating the fruit. But then I remembered the skin rashes from the micro-prickers on the bushes and the discomfort and annoyance of endlessly scavenging as fast as possible for just the right berries from inconvenient knee-high bushes, then the envy morphed into gratitude. I'm thankful that I may still delight in such organic pleasures without the pain. And I'm thankful that I still feel deeply connected by both memory and the work of my partner to the place that taught me about local food at its most fundamental level.

In truth, I value my exchange of the fields for the office. Much work lies ahead to strengthen the system that supports farms like this one. It just so happens that the reappearance of sun and heat coincided with my mid-point AmeriCorps evaluation in June (halfway done my one-year term already?!), when I could finally reflect with confident pride on how I've contributed to this overarching effort during the past six months. More to come.

Having wriggled the last lazy inclinations of hibernation from my core and having witnessed the sprouting of seeds--both literal and figurative--into adolescent life, it is now time, again, to write.

I'll continue with The Farm Book, but at some point I'll also be contributing to the new Edible Finger Lakes blog Edible Voices: http://www.ediblefingerlakes.com/edible-voices.htm. (For those of you unfamiliar with Edible publications, visit the following site to learn more about these local-flavored food magazines across the country: http://www.ediblecommunities.com/content.)

The Real World of Real Food

It didn't take long, but I miss farm work already. Unfortunately, I'll have limited opportunity to rekindle my relationship with growing organic food next season. Instead of straining in the fields, I'll be spending most of my time over the next year sedentary in--what I told myself I wanted at the end of the season--an office.

It won't be meaningless. Through Americorps, I'm serving with an organization called the Food and Health Network of South Central New York (FaHN), which is based forty-five minutes outside of Ithaca in the town of Whitney Point. The group is a collaboration of partner organizations that align with the mission of FaHN: basically to create food secure communities by increasing local food consumption. As the FaHN coordinator, I keep all of our partner organizations in-tune and on-track: basically lots of emailing, scheduling, website updating, newsletter writing, and report drafting. Staring at a computer screen (that dreaded glare) all day won't be as immediately rewarding as harvesting hundreds of pounds of food for a three-hundred-person CSA. But it will be a necessary first step to facing the realities of both adult life and the real food scene.

On Thursday, I attended my first conference: the New York State Agricultural Society annual forum. The moment I arrived, I wished I hadn't misread the conference schedule; I thought registration mingling was from 8:30 to only 9:00, but instead, it lasted a whole hour, ending at 9:30. I wandered into a room divided by lines of display tables where refreshments were being served. Lots of white men in suits. Some women, too. But lots of men. (Later in the day, I spotted two African Americans and one Indian woman—the conference definitely wasn’t celebrating diversity). I hightailed it to the refreshments table, ate my scone as slowly as possible, then weaved through the exhibits, looking interested enough to make it look like I belonged yet deter elicitation from the question-answerers stationed behind the foam board presentations. Most of the tables weren't relevant for me (they were targeting farmers or people who work directly with farmers). Everyone in the room seemed to know each other and be engaging in conversation. I finished the round in a mere ten minutes, having picked up only one (irrelevant) pamphlet from the Cornell Cheese Club table, where I'd sampled some cheddar. After returning to the refreshments table for some juice, I wasted the next hour with three more aimless circles around the room, struggling to think of some meaningful questions to ask someone, anyone.

At last, the sound of a cowbell herded everyone into the main presentation room dotted not with side-by-side chairs arranged in neat rows but with, uh-oh, round tables. I found an empty one at the end of the big room. The first person to sit with me--a woman who actually turned out to be someone I would have met at the end of the month--seemed like she was feeling similarly awkward (she's relatively new to the scene as well). After everyone found a seat, the long day began.

The first presentation addressed, somewhat surprisingly, improving the global (not regional or local) food system. I was immediately skeptical--how can we possibly tackle feeding the world's hungry before making our closest communities food secure? But these people are experts. I tried to keep an open mind, which was ultimately a task that proved difficult. The presenter spewed high-and-mighty geysers of data coupled with conclusions: to feed the growing population (9 billion people by 2050), we need to DOUBLE food production on a dying planet that will decreasingly offer viable farmland and reliable water sources—how will we do this? Surely a well-intentioned and, perhaps, necessary conversation. But I cringed when he said that "one of the greatest crimes against humanity" has been committed by European NGOs (non-governmental organizations) discouraging the cultivation of genetically modified organisms/crops (GMOs) in underdeveloped countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

To explain all of the arguments against GMOs is far too lengthy of a discussion to explore here (I suggest starting with the film Food Inc. and the book Soil Not Oil by Vandana Shiva). However, one of the greatest criticisms, in short, is that introducing GMOs, especially in underdeveloped countries, will effectively strip small farmers of their independence by making them rely on seeds that they must annually purchase every year from the GMO companies, in addition to purchasing all of the (environmentally destructive) fertilizers and pesticides that must be used to help that crop grow; GMOs will render the traditional practice of saving seeds from this year's crop to use for planting the following year's crop useless, increasing the amount of capital that farmers (who are already poor) need every year. All of this is promoted under the respectable guise of the probably impossible task of eliminating famine.

Surely, I wasn't the only person in the room aware (and supportive) of anti-GMO arguments. But during lunch, the GMO topic resurfaced, and I found myself in a minority of opinion. One woman, shaking her head with contempt, said, "Well of course the Europeans aren't going to support [GMOs]--they're not hungry!" While this may be true, this woman's assertion reflected a shallow and short-sighted view that has characterized the transformation of agriculture into a practice that is damaging on an environmental and humanitarian level. In an era of destruction and decline, we cannot afford reactionary decisions that fail to deeply assess in multiple contexts the pros and cons of implementing a new practice (what is the value of reducing famine with GMOs if only to further indenture a presently poor population?). Of course, I write much better than I speak, and I had difficulty shaping these thoughts and verbalizing articulate words before the conversation moved to a different topic. My grossly minor age and experience in comparison to those surrounding me didn't serve my confidence either.

A few more presentations focused more on the potential value of New York State agriculture and how the producers and consumers of this state might realize such value. I found this subject more promising. I didn't fail to notice, however, the absence in every presentation of the words "organic" or "holistic" or "sustainable". Not that agriculture should be discussed solely in these contexts. But surely these words deserve a place in the lexicon of 21st century agriculture. Instead, the "buy local" movement was subtly swept under the rug, regarded, by both a scholar and a farmer, as purely a niche market that has already been filled and will not further expand. Not particularly hopeful. Realistic, perhaps—who am I to counter the bottom-line claims of a long-time fruit farmer? But certainly not hopeful.

A bleak sky ushered me into the cold as I rushed out the doors of the Holiday Inn. I got into my car, praying the snow would wait until my hour-and-a-half drive was over. So much driving; I’d have to stop for gas again (the second time in one week!) on the way home. As I drove past the broken buildings and smoky factories of Syracuse, my mind sifted through the words of the day, exposing broken shells in place of tiny treasures. I had just listened to some of the biggest players in New York agriculture and not one of them discussed its potential role in reviving the depressed rural communities of the state by restoring food security. Everything comes down to economics, I kept telling myself, as I considered the implications of my own eye-opening post-graduate budgeting. Thoughts about the conference ebbed into thoughts about my service with FaHN. Tomorrow I would exercise my long commute to Whitney Point, sit in front of my computer, and set to fixing the very things that a room full of agriculture specialists said, in so many words, could not be fixed. Maybe this is a sign that I have not yet completely surrendered the romantic idealist from college. But I am working in an office.