My neglect prevailed

My neglect prevailed, but I was given this growth, these abundant plants that pushed through dirt and grew, even as I ignored the claims of spring and summer, the edict of sunshine and heat.  I forgot to care but was rewarded, by dint of throwing seed, with life-rich greens, and peas, peppers, beets, and leeks.  And now October's thinning heat and the near memory of what just was is slowly packed and preserved in bags of frozen blueberries, jars of applesauce almost made, and sauerkraut fermenting in a big stone crock.  Tradition is the memory of time, repeated.

Birthday beans

I first planted these beans in the summer of 2003. We went to Paris the previous fall and bought these beans, Facila is the variety, on our daughter's first birthday. When they grew that first summer, we reminded her that these were her birthday beans, the ones we bought in Paris. She ate them with relish right off the plant. I saved seed from the best plants and the following spring planted them again. And here we are, harvesting birthday beans for the seventh time. And they're still my daughter's favorite.
This, perhaps, is how things get named. When I list these beans in the Seed Savers Yearbook I'll document that the bean was originally named Facila, and that it's a variety sold by Vilmorin, the old French seed house that's taken over a large share of the world's seed trade, but I may call them Birthday Beans instead. It's as good a name as any I've heard for a bean. I love the story we tell each other every year, and how we say Birthday Bean with more enthusiasm than, say, "zucchini." Our daughter was born on 9.12.01, and the moment she was born I saw proof that life is irrepressible, that life itself will bourgeon and blossom and will not fail, even when people do. And as these beans grow and nourish us each year, we, too, are renewed each time we save seed and plant it; we midwife the seed from one generation to the next.
Last night I picked a bowl-full for dinner. I blanched them very briefly - they were in boiling water for less than 30 seconds - because they're so tender and fresh and I just wanted to brighten them up a bit. I quickly doused them in cold water and turned the burner on high. Into the saucier went a teaspoon of duck fat; as soon as it was hot I added the beans, fresh tarragon, and a sprinkling of fine sea salt. Two minutes from the garden to the table, full of green and family lore.

Planting fava beans and roquette

Ahhh! The first beautiful spring day and the neighborhood was alive with kids and sunlight and seeing people without winter coats and my little garden bed by the side door gets beautiful sunlight and although the north side of my house still has a foot of snow, I was able to plant roquette and fava beans today. The roquette and fava beans are both from seeds I purchased at Vilmorin Seed Co. in Paris in 2002. Roquette (Eruca sativa) is also known as arugula; it's in the brassica family. The variety of the fava bean (Vicia faba) I planted today is "DeSeville." It a large-seeded fava and, like all favas, does best in cool weather. I put them in the ground as soon as I can because they don't flower in the heat. Favas are great beans to eat, and I'm surprised more Americans don't eat them. I see dry favas, usually small-seeded varieties, in Mediterranean stores, and I see fresh pods in markets on the west coast and in markets in Italian neighborhoods. In Europe, these are the beans people ate before Columbus and other early explorers brought back beans from North America, Phaseolus vulgaris, known as the common bean. So, when you think of 'haricots verts' as the essential French green bean or you think the Romano is the traditional Italian bean - think again. Long before Europeans ate these beans that are now part of their history and culture, they were eating fava beans.

Daubière and tomatoes

Last weekend I was alone with the kids, and by taking Friday off I had time for chores, playing, and cooking. We started with a big pot of baked beans, cooked for hours and hours in my homemade daubiere, something I made almost twenty years ago (!) when I first read about the old traditional cooking pot. I’ve still never seen one other than my own, and when I look at the saggy terra cotta clay I kind of laugh, but it’s served its purpose well for all these years. My son loves baked beans and because winter seems to be an intermidable season this year, I thought beans would be good. There’s nothing fancy about baked beans, really. I used great northerns, a hunk of salt pork, an onion, ground mustard, brown sugar and molasses, and cooked it all at 250°F for the better part of a day. Then I did the same the next day and the resulting $2.00 dish was awesome.

One of our favorite desserts is pots du crème au chocolat, and my kids regularly chant “Pots du crème! Pots du crème!” in declaration of this awesomely rich dessert. But, the other day I discovered that all our eggs had been boiled and dyed, so we had to adjust. Our chocolate craving can also be satisfied by a quick batch of chocolate pudding. Lacking the eggs and slow water bath, chocolate pudding is nearly as quick as the store-bought instant pudding, and infinitely better. We make the flavors rich by a combination of baking cocoa, semi sweet chocolate, and unsweetened chocolate. A bit of milk and sugar and some corn starch to thicken it, and it’s done in ten to fifteen minutes. We used pretty simple chocolates – all regular supermarket varieties, and the richness of the pudding is great. We brought it to a friend’s house so we added a dollop of whipped cream, and we licked the bowl clean.

I usually start my tomatoes in mid-March, but something sidetracked me this year. Luckily, schools closed early yesterday so I had to leave work early to get home. With a few spare hours I got the break I needed and started a few trays. In years past I’ve started as many as a dozen different varieties of tomatoes, and have planted tomatoes strategically to avoid cross-pollination. Last year, I planted only my two favorite varieties and had such good results that I decided to focus on the same two again. My hands down favorite is Brandywine, Glick’s strain. I started growing this variety in 1998, and got my first seeds through Seed Savers Exchange. There are several strains of the Brandywine, and William Woys Weaver, food historian and author of Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, can trace the pedigree of this specific strain pretty far back. I got my seed from him, and it’s been a great tomato. Last year the fruits were stupendous - big, pendulous fruits that were as full and round as a nursing mother’s breasts. Warm and heavy in the hand, the fruits from which I saved seed were in the vicinity of 20 ounces. But! but! but! but! - tomatoes aren’t about size! And true, it’s the taste that sets the Brandwine apart from its peers. A great acidity that wakes up the mouth and prepares it for the astral vibrations that follow. Rich, deep flavor with currant, tar, tobacco and brambles, a smoky finish that echoes the best Barolos. Hah! The Brandywine is a long season tomato and in our Minnesota summers I’m never sure how they’ll turn out. I’ve been selecting seeds from early ripening fruits, hoping that eventually I’ll have a plant that thrives in Minnesota’s short, hot summer. Last year our autumn was extended for so long that the tomatoes I usually pick green all ripened on the vine. My other favorite is the 1x6, a tomato that has so few seeds I usually can’t offer them through SSE. The 1x6 is a rather difficult tomato for me, and I’m afraid that my seed selection hasn’t been great because the fruits are beginning to grow away from their name: they’re a long tapering pepper-like tomatoes that are about 1” diameter and about 6” long. Mine have always been more like 1x5s but of late they’re ballooning out to pudgier 2x6s. I saved seed from good fruit last year, so hopefully I’m on the road back to seed salvation. But throughout, the tomato is a wonder. It’s a low-acid tomato that makes the sweetest sauce I’ve ever tasted, an almost carrot-like orange suffusing the rich sauce. The plant begins very spindly, with sparse foliage that makes each plant rather anemic looking. But the plant grows and grows and eventually the regular-leaf foliage catches up and while not a heavy producer, the plant bears clusters of four or five fruits. The 1x6 is rather thick-skinned and when I don’t peel the skins for sauce I’m usually reminded to do so by the many clumps of skin on my plate. So, I’ve got a tray of each started.

Seeds

Life begins with a seed. People have planted seeds for thousands of years - collecting seeds and saving them until the next planting season, watching them grow, harvesting them again, selecting seeds from the best plants and not eating them, saving them until the next planting season, all the way until today, in 2008. Every seed comes from another seed. Seeds are an unbroken chain of continuity in the long survival of humans. Our history cannot be unwound from seeds because whatever the time or place, seeds have been planted and harvested and saved.

Companies now own seeds and farmers don’t have the right to save them. Own seeds? Own the very spit of life inside them? No you say – it can’t be! It shouldn’t be. There are two huge disasters wound up in the ownership of seeds. First, we lose genetic diversity. And this “we” is the human race. Sure, there are seed banks where certain people might have access to the genetic material kept there, but seeds are living, changing things, and if we plant only ten varieties of corn on ninety million acres instead of two thousand seven hundred varieties on one million acres, we’re compromising our future.

What is genetic diversity? A well rounded football team. What is a monoculture? A football team with twelve running backs – on offense and defense. It’s great to have a good running back but you sure as heck want other players, too. Our agricultural landscape is an enormous monoculture and the possibility of losing our vegetable varieties permanently is here. The second disaster is the acceptance that companies can own seeds, which are a central part of our human heritage. It’s like a company saying they own fire.

For thousands of years people saved seed - the countless small farmers around the world. Ownership of seed is the twenty-first century equivalent of land enclosures. We are being robbed of our common, human heritage of seed that’s been collected and selected and passed on generation after generation. And now companies come along, change something in a seed , and say they own it. Bullshit! They have no right to ownership over the genetic material that has been collected and saved and shared for millennia. Even the ubiquitous Roundup Ready soybeans, which have foreign genetic material inserted into them so that the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) doesn’t kill them, are still mostly non-Monsanto genetic material. What right does Monsanto have to claim ownership over all that commonly held genetic material? There should be a class action lawsuit against Monsanto for stealing our heritage.