One Foot On The Farm: Confessions of a farmer's daughter

Common Sense(s) on the Farm

The Five Senses and the Four Elements, Jacques Linard, c. 1627 (p.d.)

Most people, if asked which sense they would not want to lose, would probably say sight. One of the best students in my graduate school classes was a blind man. He worked his remaining senses in order to stay on a level playing field with sighted students. The irony was that this approach vaulted him well above the rest of us.

The following reminiscences follow in no special order, except that I have reserved sight for last. I am painting a picture using the other senses first, to prove that sometimes sight can get in the way of real observation. May it find its place with you too, on that level playing field.

The Sense of Smell

Not all farm smells are of manure. Some farm fragrances merit high standing in fine fragrance departments but are best (and often only) enjoyed at the source: the farm.

Almond blossoms in Spring
If you have never smelled almond blossoms in February in the Great Central Valley, you may want to add it to your list of things to do before you die. Driving into the yard during the height of bloom and opening the pickup door is like submerging your head, Pooh-style, right into the honey pot. The smell is intoxicatingly sweet.

To be fair, during the intensity of blossom time, a few more senses are heightened as well: the sense of sight has you noticing “Central Valley snow” -- the white blossoms that, when caught in the wind, float to the ground and speckle the orchards. Hearing is heightened as you notice the honey bees pollinating the blossoms and you stay your distance from the hives in order not to be stung.

Ripe nectarines in Summer

I like picking nectarines in the heat of the day. I don’t like the trickle of sweat rolling down my back while out in the fields, but I will tolerate it in order to smell the intensity of fragrance in a nectarine that has been warmed by the sun. This is why you should never eat cold fruit. If you must refrigerate it to keep it from spoiling, at least treat it like cheese and bring it to room temperature before serving; otherwise, you are depriving yourself of the enjoyment of huge amounts of fragrance, to say nothing of flavor.

Walnut leaves in Autumn

How I wish someone would bottle the fragrance of walnut leaves in autumn. Sometimes when you want a stronger fragrance with an herb, you rub its leaves and then smell your fingertips. Walking through a walnut orchard in early autumn, with the heat of the summer still lingering and the intensity of harvest now in the past, it is as though all that effort and energy has intensely rubbed the leaves for you, leaving behind one of the most haunting fragrances I know. Walnuts have supposedly been around for over 7000 years. Is history speaking to us through its leaves?

My mother's roses

Mother loved fragrant roses. At the time of her death at age 84-1/2, she had 40 rose bushes adorning the yard around the house. Every time I see (or smell) a rose, I remember Mother. R.I.P.

The Sense of Touch

A whack upside the head

In the summer months as the fruit and nuts reach maturity and start bending the tree branches, it is easy to be so engaged in your work in the orchards that you don't notice that tree branch until WHACK! you've been whacked upside the head by it. Whether they're nut branches or fruit branches, they're equally hard on the head. It evokes images of those trees in The Wizard of Oz that attacked Dorothy on her way to Oz but so far, no tree has yet fought back when I tried to pluck its fruit, although they do grab my hat now and then. Just imagine driving a tractor, even at low speed, through the orchards at this time. At the end of the row, if you aren't defending yourself, you could easily look like Scarface. Too bad Halloween is months away.

A prickly adventure

Prickly pears grow wild on the farm in the hot Central Valley. We have the red Opuntia but there are yellow and green hued varieties as well. They're from the cactus family and no kidding - just look at those spines. There is only one way I'll pick these things and that is with tongs.

You can gingerly slit them open using 2 knives and then pull back the skin and eat the fruit but it has seeds and is fairly mild so unless you want to put the fruit through a sieve and make jelly, it's a pretty nice fruit to leave on the cactus plant and just admire.

Even more prickliness

Behold the chestnut. Brushing a chestnut burr with your bare hands in June or July feels like ripples along a fairly hard hairbrush. Performing that same motion in autumn will net you a lot of scratches and an imagined encounter with a porcupine.

We've had chesnuts on the farm for years. My dad probably planted them (as well as olives and figs) in memory of his father ("Nonno"), a farmer who came from Sicily where olives and figs and chestnuts are abundant. The oldest (and largest) chestnut tree in the world still grows at the base of Mt. Etna. Nonno, as many immigrants, came through Ellis island in 1904. He became a single father of 7 little children after his wife died in childbirth so he brought the family west to California where he had a cousin. I think working the soil gave this family great solace. So much of what nourishes mankind is deeply rooted in the past.

Chestnut trees are not self-pollinating. You need one tree to be a pollinator for the tree planted next to it so don’t try planting one tree and thinking much will happen.

The leaves on a chestnut have a sawtooth design and the blossoms or “flowers” are called catkins. You can make flour from a chestnut but the taste is not for me. I only eat chestnuts roasted. Getting to that stage takes a bit of effort but it, like most pleasures in life, is worth it.

Chestnuts usually fall from the tree when they’re ripe, either on their own or by a swift kick from the wind. When the burrs hit the ground, if you’re lucky, the chestnut will pop out of the burr and its mahogany-colored shell will be very visible to you between the leaves. For those burrs that hold on tight to the nuts, I position my feet on either side of the burr’s opening and push down. Out pops the nut. This is tedious, to be sure, and not the way a large commercial operation would do it, but it works for me.

You want to store chestnuts in a cool place (like the refrigerator) so they stay fresh. Most nuts like to be in a cold environment once they’re off the tree. When you’re ready to roast chestnuts, you want to cut a little “x” on them (called “scoring”); if you don’t do this before roasting them, you might get a small explosion because the nut will expand against the fairly durable outer skin when it is heated. Then you just peel the skin away while the nut is still hot and eat to your heart’s delight. I do this in wintertime. We used to roast chestnuts over the fire, like in the Christmas Song, but nowadays, I use a pizza pan in the oven on the “roast” setting. Some of the charm is lost that way, but none of the flavor.

The Sense of Taste

True wealth

Some words are meaningless without adjectives. Take WEALTH, for example. It could mean what Warren Buffett or George Soros discuss at Sun Valley or Davos. Financial wealth. Or it could mean that type of wealth that engages all the human senses simultaneously and finishes in a state of great and memorable happiness. True wealth. I get it by popping black mission figs into my mouth while sitting under the old fig tree with some cracked walnuts from the orchard.

Picking figs is a bit like hunting for easter eggs, only on a tree. The fig leaf is huge compared to the little fig - or even your hand.

You can eat figs out of hand, dry them and eat them tossed with steamed chard, salt and pepper and olive oil (my Sicilian father's recipe).

Or make them into the most wonderful These-Aren't-Anything-Like-Store-Bought-Fig-Newtons cookies for Christmas time (my Sicilian grandfather's recipe). The cookies use the same basic formula for making ravioli - (making the filling, rolling the dough, shaping the cookies) and takes all day.

Some things are worth it.

The start of autumn

When apples start dropping from the trees, I start imagining apple cider simmering on the stove, warm stewed apples for dessert, apple pie, baked apples, an apple a day (or more). We grow Golden Delicious, Fuji and Gravenstein.

Here is a super-simple salad made solely farm crops: Hachiya persimmons, pomegranate seeds and walnuts.

The thing about taste - it really is best to eat what is in season. Nowadays, we have the "luxury" of eating crops all year long but they'll be flown in from other countries and there is an environmental issue with that. There's also the issue of soul. Anticipating things in life makes life more exciting. Having everything whenever you want it is the surest way to dull the senses.

The Sense of Hearing

When you are on a farm, sound seems more intense. It's quieter out here so sound seems magnified. Even the birds seem louder!

My favorite sound on the farm is that of tractors starting up. Although the most important tool on the modern farm seems to have become the cell phone, whenever you see a tractor, a farm is probably nearby.

Walking through the orchards, you also hear the sound of church bells - reminiscent of European villages. The local parish is just a mile down the road so unless the tractor is roaring, the bells tell you the time all day long.

Other sounds

During blossom time, the bees talk non-stop, probably alerting one another to where the best pollen is, kind of like we alert one another to store sales.

At harvest time, dragonflies inhabit the clothesline (for some reason) and their buzzing is nerve-wracking. They also look prehistoric to me so I give them a wide berth.

Almonds are knocked from the trees during harvest by machine, and they rain down on the ground like the sound of hail.

The Sense of Sight

It is a wonderful thing to be able to see and appreciate the blossoms in Spring, the ripening fruit in Summer, the nuts ready for harest (late Summer and early Autumn), the rainfall and tule fog (in Winter). But beyond appreciation, working the farm involves constant monitoring on so many levels: monitoring soil hydration levels, searching the skies for a change in the weather that could help - or hurt - the crops, locating and repairing broken sprinklers, replacing trees that have been uprooted by heavy winds, and so much more. Sight gives color and depth to the beauty around us. Long live the family farm!

What you can't eat, you can!