Fall Harvest: Preparation and Feast
9 October 2009
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Having gathered the food, now it must be prepared. The gathering, it turns out, is the easy part; just walk along and chuck stuff (respectfully) into a sack; toss the sacks (gently)Â into the car and off you go. But processing! With all the variety of forage we raked in, Alexia’s home became a muti-tasker’s paradise; attention deficit disorder was your greatest ally. This was experiential education at its best. Boxes of apples were boiled into applesauce which then became the star of the canning demonstration, ground meats and dried berries together with rendered sheep fat were turned into jerky and pemican. We mixed salal, huckleberry, salmonberry, even some hawthorn into mush for dried fruit peels. We made rose hip honey and rose hip syrup and a sauce of over-ripe golden plums. A half dozen wild cereals were threshed, winnowed and baked into soda bread.
The kitchen was clockwork chaos – innumerable projects flying in and out of the single stalwart oven; the stove constantly covered in a shifting medley of pots and pans, each touched in turn by the better part of seventy-odd hands. Two fish baked in a sauce, chicory root “coffee” bubbled on the stove next to a pot of leeching acorns, soft white cheese was made from scratch.
For those of us needing a moment’s rest, and any who preferred to learn in a less intense environment, scattered stations appeared about the yard. Alexia showed us how to handle a beehive, Shondell watched over a racked and drying sheep hide as we kneaded and massaged it into a usable skin. A borrowed cider pressed whirred and rumbled in the driveway, which meant we had to stop and sample fresh pressed cider: fill your cup straight from the spout – you can’t get it any fresher than that! Behind the house others sat cracking hazelnuts and walnuts and trading stories.
Then guests arrived from the school’s extended community and it was time to eat. We gave thanks for the fruit of the earth, for the energy that transformed it into the meal before us, and for the knowledge passed on by so many people that made our feast possible. As we ate the sky lit with bright pinks and blues and everyone paused to watch. Eventually dishes were put away, a fire grew in the fireplace, and we drifted from food to conversation and song.
This was a “fire hose day.” Information flowed in an uninhibited barrage: place yourself as close to the center of the stream as you like, style your experience as you desire, learn as much as you can. The evening flowed from preparation, to feast, to relaxation: the day moved with all the natural rhythm of a crashing wave. By day’s end we were left with the tingling exhaustion of a day spent hard at play: tired, but smiling, like children coming in from a long day of sledding and snowball fights.
At long last we left, feeling full, warm and tired. I was sure we had stayed late into the night, but when I returned home my clock insisted it was only nine thirty.
I went to bed anyway.