Cross Quarters

[greenstorm]

On the one hand, the conventional pagan calendar was formed in a very different place and agricultural system.

On the other hand, I picked roughly a gallon of sakatoons, 2L of raspberries, a jar of pickling cucumbers, and a bunch of other stuff on the weekend.

I'll probably be picking that many raspberries every 2 days or so for a bit.

Every day I miss eating a cucumber I need to make up for it the next day by eating two. The pickling cukes are poised for a bit of an avalanche.

The tomatoes are trickling in slowly, lots of orange ones from the polyamorous row comparatively. My seed collection is swelling.

Apples are swelling. Everything is building and building, the trickle before the flood of harvest.

For my garden it's a good year.

Things are rough in other directions right now. Engaging with relationships as they are, not as I want them to be: that's taking a lot of constant presence and effort. When my expectations get too tangled up in something I often can stop appreciating what it actually is, and I also generally stop looking for what I need in places I can actually find it. Maybe PDA makes me extra aware that carrying the weight of other people's expectations is a heavy burden. It's not one I prefer to inflict on those I love without consent.

But every day I come back to the garden and for awhile things are alright.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

polyamorous tomatoes, lol. ours still haven't started ripening, though there is fruit on every plant now. OTOH, we're drowning in apples, all three trees - even the tiny semi-dwarf honeycrisp that has never previously borne fruit - bowed to the ground. we're making cider, and slicing & freezing, and canning, and dehydrating, and making fruit leather; all four interns have been at it all week - though with somewhat mixed results, as one of the volunteers is a young oaf whom i somewhat regret taking on. in hoeing out the grass from the beans, he also hoed up the beans. for instance. reminding me that bad help is worse than no help. fortunately, he's leaving, so my cider press is no longer at risk of imminent destruction through sheer clumsiness.

anyway - the pagan calendar. for my latitude, the thing that always feels Very Incorrect is the idea that summer solstice is the BEGINNING of summer. temps are always in the high 90s-low 100s for 3-4 weeks by the time we get to solstice, and it's often the worst part of wildfire season. it's obviously summer. that one is the most egregious. our seasons here don't pack neatly into 3 month sections; summer is much longer; spring & fall & winter much shorter. it's probably true in Dublin or London, but definitely not in Albuquerque. so i acknowledge Beltane as the first day of summer, Litha as midsummer, Lammas - definitely still summer; Mabon as the first day of fall (that one is reasonable given the actual behavior of our weather), Samhain mid-autumn, winter solstice the first day of winter (also reasonable), Imbolc the first day of spring (we put in our spring garden no later than the last week of Feb, every year), Ostara as mid-spring.

so while we celebrate the harvest for Lammas, we do so with the recognition that we've been harvesting various things since April.

[greenstorm]

Yeah, the outcrossing tomato project is ongoing since 2014 or so and I've jumped on: https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/landrace-gardening-promiscuously-pollinated-tomatoes-zbcz1401

I have so many apples coming: how do you do your fruit leather? I really should get over my irritation at my dehydrator.

We are pretty much the inverse of your situation; we also don't pack neatly into the wheel but in the other direction. In the winter changes in the light are definitely noticeable so the timing on some of them feels right. And even with our short season I harvest stinging nettles and rhubarb long before the beginning of Aug. But also: last year never felt like summer at all, and this year we'll have maybe a total of six weeks max where it's warm enough not to have to worry about maybe taking a jacket or wearing long pants.

I tend to think of all the Official Days as times to stop, take a breath, and look around to acknowledge that change has happened. Without them it's suddenly the first frost and I have lost my location within time.

[yarrowkat]

oh, that is really interesting! we grow all heirloom-variety tomatoes, and have some definite high-yield favorites (nebraska wedding did spectacularly well last year, and the whole "zebra" line, all colors, always perform well for us), and we also get a few volunteers every year, which we usually let grow. i will have to watch the pollinators' behaviors on each kind of plant!

we do fruit leather this way: puree the apples (with or without skin; skins can make the leather a little tougher and of course are packed with flavor and nutrients), spread thinly on parchment paper, put in the oven on Low for a couple hours, or until it has dried sufficiently. alternatively, put in the dehydrator for a couple hours, or - local variant - in your closed car parked in a sunny location. for real.*

*you can bake cookies this way here, too, though it takes several hours, and there are recipes that perform better under car-baking conditions.

[greenstorm]

Green zebras are one of my favourites for flavour. They don't really go up north here though. Apparently someone crossed them with silvery fir tree, which is beautiful and requires no maintenance, and made a variety called Lucinda which I am trying to hunt down.

If you have wherewithal next year, I highly recommend getting a packet of the panamorous seeds from experimental farm network and trying a couple of them. Having no idea what you'll get is so fun! I'm going to do a tasting of several yellow/orange/yellowgreen ones this afternoon and save seeds from the best.

That sounds deeply manageable! I really should set up a dehybrator on the hot spot on my deck but until then I'll make do with oven and dehydrator. You puree them raw? Any lemon to keep from oxidizing? This sounds like a blender/food processor project. I bet I could toss some raspberries in too.

[yarrowkat]

i will look for those panamorous seeds, thank you! we do love green zebras, but when made into sauce, the resulting sauce is greenish brown and very hard to convince onself to eat, even knowing it's going to be delicous, so we've been growing red zebras lately instead. a bit sweeter and less tangy, but they can up a pretty orangey red.

we core, slice, and drop into a food processor raw, yes. we don't usually skin them, or use lemon for dried fruits (always for canned and frozen ones) - it is somehow easier to eat brown fruit leather than brown tomato sauce, lol. you certainly could, though, especially if your apples are more sweet than tart. you could mix in any other kind of fruit you like!

[greenstorm]

Thank you, I'm stealing that.

I don't mind green tomato sauce. I did make a sauce out of sungolds once that was far too sweet to eat on pasta though.

[yarrowkat]

Thank you, I'm stealing that.

enjoy!