May, 2024 ~
I have never really liked fruit. I think what I really didn’t like was grocery store manipulated fruit. This changed after a profound experience with cloudberries in Norway. I traveled there several times a year to teach, spending time in the Arctic Circle of Samiland. One of my friends and teachers there is a Shaman, who often invited me to accompany him to harvest the few plants that grow in that rugged tundra. The year we gathered cloudberries was the year I learned to love fruit. My teacher, Niillas, encouraged me to taste the berries we were collecting. My body literally “sparked” at the first bite–I was tasting the color orange, the soul of Vitamin C. It was a literal explosion of the taste of sunshine.
My family, on both sides, were farmers. My Father’s parents and grandparents became miners after their ancestors had to sell vast tracts of Pennsylvania land they started farming in the 1700s. My Mother’s parents came from a long lineage of Polish, Scotch/Irish and Canadian farmers, and my Mom grew up on a farm. I only met my Grandmother once, and one of my most striking memories of her is JARS. Jars of jams, preserves, of almost everything that can be jarred and canned. And I remember what she said to me: “Whatever you do, learn to preserve food. You never know when you will rely on it.”
As I imagine many of us might have done, I planned to learn from my Mom. I told her many times I wanted all her recipes for homemade soups, pickles and jams. I was raised in the suburbs; my childhood was spent in a home that was one of the first built on land that had for over 200 years been a farm. The farm became a village and then a suburb. I think many of my generation have farming ancestry and were brought up on smaller tracts of land, perhaps eating TV dinners and commercially canned food. The transition to “convenient living” happened quickly. My Mother refused to rely on those modern culinary “advancements”, and yet my childhood was still very different from hers due to all the ways food became more accessible in stores: we no longer needed to grow it. Only a generation away from the hard work and self sufficiency of her farm background, all links to that seem to have dissolved in my lifetime. Loss can happen so quickly.
Two years ago, an apricot tree – one of only 3 trees that survived a fire – planted in what’s now our yard when our neighborhood was a Japanese internment camp in World War 2, had a bumper crop. It was raining apricots from all our neighborhood trees. Neighbors collected them, but many began to over-ripen, so I took boxes to the mountains and carried them up into the woods for bears. In the process of doing this, I tried one. I had never eaten a fresh apricot–only the dried version. I was doubtful. When I tasted one of the apricots from our tree, I had a response similar to my cloudberry moment. The flavor is the purest, apricot colored-sunshine-fresh taste. Our apricots explode with flavor that is all color.
After we stuffed our freezer and still had piles, I remembered my Grandmother’s words. I had never made Jam or any kind of preserves so it felt like a big deal to try it. I researched, studied, bought jars and sterilized them, and began a several hours long apricot jamming process that went well into the night. I learned we need less sugar because of our tree’s natural sweetness. I shyly shared the many jars with friends and family, and–there were demands. People asking if I had more. People trying to cajole me out of someone else’s jar. People writing to ask when the next batch might be.
We still have apricots in our freezer from that bumper crop, and I am still making jam. And giving it away. Each deeply jewel toned orange/amber jar reminds me of my Mother, my Grandmother, and the long lineage of ancestors for whom preserving food wasn’t novel; it was survival. It reminds me that what is lost can sometimes also be found, perhaps in a new way or form.
The earth is still so generous, even as the human species continues to abuse and extract and suffocate her. Our tree is pretty abundant this year, and I’ll be making more jam, and reviving my lineage, later this summer. The line starts at our door. 😊