Fruits: a celebration

The peak harvests from our tomato crop are inevitably post-frost, but the tomatoes do ripen in a hurry after the plants begin to die back this time of year. So with my first 20lb pail of ripe tomatoes, I've finally got enough to start canning! After working with a pressure canner to put up the winter's green beans and peas, the gentle and quick boiling water bath, used to safely can acid foods, feels like a snap. A good supply of tomatoes really does perk up the winter root cellar diet.

This first harvest of tomatoes went into a chutney, with some of the small tart apples, gleaned in an abandoned homestead apple orchard, abundant this year but not yet sweetened with enough frosts. The tart apples married well with the sweet ripe tomatoes, spiced with red, green and yellow peppers, curry, dates and a touch of raw sugar and homemade apple cider vinegar. Three dozen pints should keep us happy.

I enjoy looking ahead this time of year, and providing us with small gifts and celebrations of summer, for the slow cold days of winter. Perhaps this act is the more genuine origin of the holiday tradition of buying up summer's sale items, storing them in closets and other dark places to bring them out adorned with festive wrapping to generate a feeling of celebration and giving. Although I have long abandoned the malls and consumate culture of consumer-mania, I still feel drawn to practice this art of adorning our harvests into creative and stimulating combinations, package them up and put them in a dark cupboard, until they are called upon, one by one, to generate that true feeling of celebration and camaraderie.

Another crop just coming into it's peak are the Ground Cherries. These are indeed a strange fruit, quaint in their paper wrapping, and odd flavor combination of tomato and pineapple. But they are a prolific annual fruit that can be grown by gypsies and renters alike. Harvesting them is a unique process as well because as the name implies, the fruit falls to the ground when it is nearly ripe, and finishes ripening in the dappled shade of the bushes. Their paper husks make them resistant to rot, with a good mulch underneath, and dry weather, the fruits will ripen conveniently on the ground, and can be gathered once a week. Which is a relief because lifting and weaving through the tangled, ground-hugging branches to gather the fruits is a bit of a chore, not at all like harvesting other fruits that ripen at more convenient heights.

But they have a few winning qualities... They are not a watery fruit, making them easy to dry, they make perfect little raisins, with a pineapple twist. And they will continue ripening indoors, much like tomatoes, lengthening the season for fresh fruit, and making for convenient sized harvests for ease of preserving, instead of the all-at-once nature of more delicate berries. Also, I have never once seen a bird or other animal or insect (besides the occasional slug) attracted by the fruit, so I have no competition for the harvest, unlike true cherries and tree fruits.

To dry the ground cherries, I simply string the ripe fruits into long chains and hang them behind the wood stove. Depending on the weather, and how often I am using the wood stove for canning, they will take a week or so to dry into raisins. I store the dried fruit in glass jars, opening the lids often in the first month to check for moisture on the lid, or a moldy fruit. If they are still moist they can be spread out on a cookie sheet and placed in a warm (100F) oven for an hour or so, cooled and returned to an airtight container in a dark, cool place.

The flavor of frost

This is a gorgeous time of year, the temperatures have cooled off, and the mosquitoes, blackflies, biting midges, deerflies, and horseflies have disappeared with the heat, which makes a huge difference in our ability to enjoy the garden, and outdoor activities. We even had our first stargaze in quite a few months, dreaming up at the night sky without being eaten alive!

We did have our first major frost on September 9th, dawn broke to a dusting of fine white frost over the garden and fields. But we were prepared, and had covered the tender crops: peppers, tomatoes, ground cherries, a late basil crop, and even a pair of flowering fennel plants, hoping for some fennel seed. The frost spelled the end for the winter squash, pumpkin and cucumber vines, but the zucchini bushes showed real vigor, only burning the tallest leaves and not damaging the crown or small fruits. The last bean crop was also frosted, so we harvested the last of the green beans, and have been feasting on them, getting our fill of the fresh crop knowing it will be canned or fermented from now on.

The frost also marked the end of our market garden crops, which is more of a relief than a disappointment, we did as well as we could this year, and it is good to be able to focus all of our energies on our own harvest and winter preparation.

The bulk of our tomatoes, tomatillos and ground cherries are just ripening now, so we will keep them protected from frost for another 3-4 weeks before bringing in the remaining green fruits to ripen indoors. So my tomato sauce, salsa and chutney canning fest has begun. I'm also drying some ground cherries, they make nice little "raisins" for baked goods, with that unique pineapple flavor.
The sunflowers have indeed bloomed in time to make seeds, I always forget how frost hardy they are. We are going to experiment with de-hulling the seeds this fall/winter.

My own accidental hybrid "Sweet Curry" kabocha type winter squash, ripening in the dappled shade of the frosted vines. These will have to be brought in before the next frost, without the sheltering umbrella of leaves, the squash fruits would be damaged by a frost.

The popcorn is ready to harvest, the kernels mostly dried on the cob. I husk them right away, then store them in a large onion bag and let them continue drying for a few weeks before shelling the cobs.

A late summer fruit, Wild Raisins are ripening. They have a date-like flavor, but also like dates, have an unfortunate pit. My favorite way of making use of these delicious and abundant fruits is to put them through a food mill raw, and dry them as a fruit leather, they need no sugar this way. The pulp is also good added to applesauce, making an interesting applesauce variation.

Of course, the local songbird population is also fond of these sweet fruits. This female Common Yellowthroat, of the wood warbler family, foraged in the same bush.

I got this lucky shot some time later.

I try to keep a profusion of late summer and fall flowers available for the insects. These flowering lettuce bushes would normally be a part of my seed saving regime, but we are going to start over with regionally appropriate seed varieties in our next garden, somewhere on the West coast, so these flowers are just for the bees. The last pollen producing flowers in the garden are the hardy broccoli flowers, I always leave the small side shoots to go to flower, they continue to bloom and attract bumble bees even after the ground starts to freeze, well into November, even early December.

A fennel flower, on it's way to seed, I hope. I started these fennel plants in March this year, determined to get some fennel seed from these slow-pokes, we'll see.

The last of the Coriander flowers, my absolute favorite flower in the garden, they make a delicate bouquet all of their own.

It's amazing that they become such homely clusters, which is likewise, one of my favorite spices. We're curry-aholics, and if you've never tried coriander in baked goods, replace it with cinnamon in a spiced cookie recipe for a nice delight.