While I have ambivalent feelings about our current hot season (see earlier entry), I do quite enjoy the early mornings. This morning I finished hanging out the clothes my wife had started and then I sifted through the bean plants--these amazing little plants that started as a small seed only a couple of months ago. The harvest must call back to some evolutionary constructed connection with the earth and sustenance. I fondle each plant, moving it around to find the ripe beans, each a treasured reward. But this isn't a farmer type harvest--pick it all and then off to the market--but rather a familial harvest, one where I ask the plant for a few beans each day. Bean plants I learned are actually quite sensitive to the harvest, producing more if the beans are picked early before the bean undulates with pregnant seeds, producing less when it's weighted down with big meaty beans. Later I will ask my kids to snip off the ends of the beans, a chore I did with my mother and grandmother as I grew up. Then each night during the harvest season we will have some garden item to eat--beans, a red pepper, a tomato, some cucumbers. It's not much and may only compliment a frozen piece of meat or some pre-packaged noodles but it's a small token of my tenuous connection with cool summer mornings and the green earth.
8 comments:
I don't remember my bean picking experience quite like you do. I remember thinking how many beans can grow on one plant. Just when I thought I was finished I would lift up another leaf and find a hundred more beans to be picked. Not to mention the excruciating heat pounding down on me. Snipping beans while talking with mom and grandma was a lot more enjoyable. I would take snipping over picking any day. Love the pic of your tiniest munchkin : )
I also recall the heat. And, as a kid, the picking felt like mere work mostly (though I have to say even then I sensed something about the growth, the food, the harvest). Of course our parents' garden was huge with long rows of beans. Certainly more of a farmer type garden and harvest. No surprise there as dad grew up on a farm.
Dog, you're a blogger! I saw your pic, which was what tipped me off. Loved the personal etymology. I'll be checking you daily, so don't fail me.
The one thing I really liked about growing up on a farm, and the only thing I currently miss about living on a farm was/is the garden. My brother was a master--he could get anything to grow. I would, of course, go and help him with this "easy work" (try hauling hay for 9 hours a day and you'll know what I mean) and try to glom onto some of the green thumb credit. I always knew, however, that it was really his work and his skill that made the garden grow.
That really was me before--I just forgot how to post as myself. Would you mind deleting the "gardnecl" comment?
you gotta love hauling hay. It was about the only job a young kid could get in Cache Valley. So damn hot and itchy. Still, I'd prefer that to fastfood.
You got that straight. I use my hay hauling experience as a way to connect with third world peasants.
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