Farm Children

The slanting morning sun turns the ginkgo into something more like a blazing candle than a tree. But the  children, oblivious to everything that is not the antique tractor, only notice the tree when its branches interfere with their clamoring play. 

"There are still some plums on that tree over there," their grandfather says.

They do not register the offering--not because they do not hear him, or because they do not like plums, but because the sentence itself does not compute in their Midwestern brains.

I walk over to the tree, laden with the last of the dusty purple fruits. "Do you want a plum?" I call over to my children.

"YES!" my son shouts, leaping off the tractor, then pauses. "Wait. Where?" He looks around, confused.

"Right here," I say, pointing to the tree. "You have to choose the one you want."

He and his sister come running, wide-eyed. The small tree, purposefully kept to a height that makes plucking fruit a simple task, offers a wealth of choices to children who have never seen a plum that wasn't stacked in a grocery store display. It takes them a fraction of a second to choose their first plum, but many additional minutes to inspect a dozen more to ensure they have made the right choice before they actually do the picking. We wash off the dust at the outdoor spout, and bite deep into the pale, golden flesh. Tree-ripened to perfection. My son smiles and rolls his eyes in that peculiar way he has to indicate bliss.

Clutching their sticky, half-eaten treasures, the children climb to the top of another piece of once-useful farm equipment. As they munch plums, they look out over the land their father's family farmed for decades.

Three rows of gnarled peach trees mark the limit of their growing. Across the dirt road--in what used to be acres of grape vines tethered to their wires every summer by a boy who remembers the itchy sensation of rising allergies as he worked--the land is leased. The new farmer's tidy rows of baby clementine trees are encased in the high-tech drip irrigation system that has replaced the old irrigation ditch that once doubled as a children's swimming-hole on especially hot days.

My children are not nostalgic for these things. They simply marvel at the plums. "Can we have more?" they want to know.

"Of course," I tell them. I point out the limits of the family property--the rows of peaches on the south side, good for playing under now that the fruit is over, the dirt road the house faces, the bare track where the yard ends on the north side. "You can have anything you like from any of these trees. You don't have to ask permission. You can just pick what you want to eat -- only be sure to wash it first because it's very dusty." I point out the pear tree too. Tossing plum pits on the ground, we walk towards the backyard and spot a pomegranate tree. Pomegranates! So ripe they are literally bursting on the branches.

For an hour, my son sits diligently picking seeds out of the pomegranate, his fingers and face slowly turning crimson. "They look like red teeth," my daughter observes, poking at the fruit. She doesn't care for it too much, so I lead her to the two rows of grape vines that mark the back edge of the yard. Her grandfather has promised there should still be some good grapes back there, "though I didn't take very good care of them this year."

We have to walk past the small vegetable garden--hot peppers, eggplants, tomatoes--all neatly laid out in raised boxes, on our way to the grapes. (You cannot keep a farmer from farming, even when he's retired.) Next we stumble through a confusion of squash vines, hidden from view by the clipped hedge that borders the small lawn. Finally, we reach the grapes--towering, mountainous vines creating perfect hiding spots or forts. "Where are the grapes?" my daughter wants to know. "Look closely," I tell her. And then she spots them. The bunches are few and far between this late in the season, but the grapes, a dusky red, are still firm. She chooses two clusters and carries her treasures back to the spigot to wash them.

We have offered everything we picked to the grandparents, though they smiled and politely declined. "I don't eat much fruit," their grandfather says from his patio recliner. Again, my children seem not to understand. Surrounded by all of this, how can you do anything but gorge yourself on the ripe wonder?

And so they do, eating so much fruit that even the boy who is always hungry is too full to eat lunch.

Later that afternoon, our daughter looks around and says to her father, "This was a good farm." She pauses. "Wasn't it, daddy?"

"Yes," he says to her, "it was a good farm."

Things We Were Very Sure We Knew--But We Really Didn't Know at All--Back When We Were Teenagers

(This is an easy list to start, though it may in fact be impossible to end.)

• How to drive on the highway.
• What "flabby" thighs looked like. On us.
• All the words to that one song that Adam could play so great on his guitar and we all loved to sing softly late at night when we were supposed to be home already but we just had to stay out a few minutes longer and sing that one song, you know the one that goes...
• How much curl was the right amount of curl to make our hair as perfect as possible. 

Senior yearbook photo, circa 1987

• Also: bangs, the value and proportion of.
• Heartbreak.
• That we would always, all our whole lives, be able to finish at midnight, with the help of just one laughing friend, a box of a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts--so hot and fresh that they dissolved into little puddles of happiness on our tongues.
• That we were artists.
• That no one would ever fall in love with us.
• Fashion. More specifically: that your father's size extra-large, shell pink button down looked great on all of us (who were about size 5 back when that meant something). That earrings should be worn in threes, but none of the three should match. That multiple pairs of socks, of different colors, layered over one another and topped by shoes that channeled 1920s football boots looked good on anyone.
• That the most boring thing in the world is dusting. (It turns out to be lying silent and stone still in your toddler's narrow bed at 8pm, uncomfortably pregnant, highly conscious of the fact that you have papers to grade and that if you make the slightest move to leave his room until he is completely asleep, this whole process will have to start all over. Closely followed by starting to grade those papers at 9pm.)
• That the best place to read is in a tree.
• That only babies and old people take baths.
• That doing chores to loud music first thing on Saturday morning is a hardship.

The stuff we were (mostly) right about?

• Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine. (It is gross. However, we don't have to drink it.)
• That whatever you have to face, if you have at least one true friend to see you through, things will be fine on the other side. (Or, at least, finer than they were without that friend along for the ride.)
• Leggings. (!)
• That writing an outline before writing the paper is a stupid waste of time (because how are you supposed to know what your ideas are going to turn out to be until you've written the paper?)
• That homemade macaroni-and-cheese is the best comfort food ever.

What goes on your lists?

Cozy Food

There's a real bite in the air and frost on the grass every morning. In my book, that means it's time to start baking things, stewing things and making soup. In the last week, I've used a pound of butter in various breads, pies and crumbles. I've made a savory beef-and-mushroom pie, drunk good red wine and, tonight, concocted a soup that even the seven-year-old ate with relish. In case you need an easy soup that is satisfying (and that contains nothing they will pick around or moan about), I highly recommend the following.

Hearty Vegetable Soup with Cod

Combine the following ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, and then let simmer for approximately 20 minutes, or until potatoes and carrots are soft.

2 quarts water
2 Tbsp. good chicken bouillon
1 chopped onion
5-6 small red, russet, or gold potatoes (a combination is nice), chopped
3 small carrots, chopped
1 handful fresh spinach
4 cloves garlic
1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1 T. grated asiago or parmesan cheese

Season soup with the following, and then puree thoroughly with immersion blender until the mixture is very smooth.

1 tsp. thyme
good pinch salt
fresh ground black pepper

Adjust seasoning to taste. Then add to the pot:

1 pound cod, cut into bite-size pieces

Turn heat off, and leave pot covered, while you sautee the following in a small amount of olive oil, just until the peas are cooked, making sure to leave everything nice and crisp.

1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
2 cups sugar snap peas (or other pea pods; or 1 cup shelled peas)

Check to make sure cod is cooked through. Then dump veggies into soup, and serve.

The soup broth becomes lovely and creamy with the potatoes for a base, and the richness of so many different vegetable flavors is delicious. It was a very nice contrast to the thick bites of cod and few crisp floating veggies.

The beautiful thing about this recipe is that as long as you make sure you have a good mixture of veggies simmering to make the broth nice and rich, you can vary what you choose to puree versus leave whole, depending on what the pickiest in your family will/won't eat in soup. I don't think any kind of peas in pods will puree nicely, so if your household won't eat pea pods, I'd recommend using shelled peas. Also, you could easily substitute shrimp, scallops, or some other firm fish for cod, as well as use other veggies that you like.

All you have to do is procure a crusty loaf to serve alongside, and delicious fall dinner is ready in almost no time.