It is such a beautiful time of year.
The air is still, the trees are softly coloured and it is cool enough to wear cardies and run the wood stove round the clock.
I remember how bare this hilltop was when I first moved here, and how I would lose myself in those tangly nostalgic gardens of Jinny Blom’s that you see in Gardens Illustrated, with all the fruits and flowers and so called weeds mingling together; a child’s dream of what a garden should be.
Now, the beginnings of my own tangly garden are out there, the ever lower ever more wintry light now backlighting the mullein seeds pods and the bright red leaves of the grape leaf maple, all washed with the golden glow from that spreading limbed ash tree that you might have sat and eaten under in summer.
My kitchen is in chaos – bottles and jars filled and yet to be filled, baskets of tomatoes (still!) and quinces awaiting their turn, vinegar, the Mouli, drying racks, lids, the Vacola and all the other bits and pieces.
It is a beautiful time of year but full of hard work, both here in the kitchen and on the farm. But hard work and beauty are the ingredients for the most delicious daydreaming. When the hands are cutting and peeling, and the spirit is restful, it frees the mind to wander.
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Do you know I can barely recall what it was that drew me here in the first place? I can imagine a story about it, but these last 12 years have re-made me to the extent that I am scarcely the same person as I was back then. This is all part of life now. But I know, from the joy it brings, that a big part of it was this – the dream of eating like this, of sitting down to meals where every single ingredient bar spices and oil come from the 100 acres surrounding you, where cooking is the furthest thing from drudgery yet springs entirely from hard work, where delight and resourcefulness and imagination and practice are more important than recipes, where eating itself is an act of grace.
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Convenience. Convenience and its new best friend, novelty. When I worked in advertising many of the clients I dealt with were in snackfoods and made it their business to probe every aspect of human nature and behaviour for weak points, frustrations, where convenience and novelty could take hold. The reward on offer, the payoff, was speed, saving time, saving effort, relief from stress but most potent of all for the modern day snackfood consumer…boredom relief. Quite a concept, isn’t it?
When you think about it in these terms, growing your own food, preserving your own produce, making your own sausages and so on, is actually pretty darn inconvenient – it takes time, it’s messy, it’s hard work, your hands hurt, you end up sleep deprived as you wait up in a dark quiet house for that ‘one last batch’ of quinces to develop that rosy glow and sometimes, as happens when you throw your hat in with the elements and animals and the cycle of things, there are the deep frustrations and even despair that have to be accepted as part of it all.
So, is it worth it? It’s a good question for many reasons, not least of which because asking it of myself, often, keeps me on my toes, keeps me alive to the passion that got me here in the first place.
My answer to myself is not easy to explain other than to say that in the ever smaller space connecting hard work and food, there are things that matter that don’t fit easily into the snackfood marketer’s brand map.
Gratitude. For having a crop to preserve even though the crows and the marauding pigs and the heatwave gave destroying it a red hot go. For living in an area with such a forgiving climate, reliable rain, and deep fertile soil.
Humility. How easily it could have been different. Being reminded of our place in the cycle of things, of our own creatureliness.
Thriftiness. Making use of what we have, and being resourceful.
Nourishment of body and spirit, a sense of fulfilment.
And because you had skin in the game, joy in eating.
Inconvenient, and hard work…yes. But surely a small price to pay to be reminded of these things, these things that snackfood marketers would much rather prefer we forget.