The Sunnyvale Sun
Letters & Opinions
Farm-fresh food reminder of simpler time
By Carol Bogart
As I read and edited this week's cover story on people who go straight to the grower to buy a "share" of fruits and vegetables direct from the farm, it brought back a multitude of pleasant memories.
Farming figured large in our family.
My dad grew up on an Ohio dairy farm. As a small boy, he perched on a stool in a darkened barn, keeping my grandfather company each morning as he milked the cows.
My Aunt Nettie, 86, still mows the paths between fruit trees in orchards that have supplied fruit for Gerber's apple sauce for half a century.
After my dad went into business for himself (he was 50), he found and bought a farm for the three of us when I was 10.
The first thing he did was clear a space between the house and barn for a big garden, one that proved productive with its well-drained sandy soil.
At harvest time (Ohio growing seasons are, of course, much shorter than those we have in California), Mom and I would pick and put up the produce.
She made jams, jellies, tomato sauce and juice, dried corn and frozen vegetables from scratch. Many a late summer/early fall day would find Mom, my Aunt Mabel, Gramma and me sitting around the gate-legged kitchen table--shelling peas, peeling peaches, snapping beans and just "visiting."
I can tell you the sugar content in just-picked corn means a taste treat you can't duplicate unless you pick it yourself. As little as two hours between picking and putting it on the table can make a difference.
Homegrown tomatoes also have a sweetness and texture all their own.
Other crops, such as potatoes, aren't quite as touchy, but one of the season's treasures are the tiny new potatoes hidden amongst the big ones, uprooted with a potato fork placed carefully just at the edge of the mound so as not to spear any. Mom used to braise them in butter, sprinkle them with parsley and dole them out democratically at dinner because they were coveted by all.
I still have the last lidded glass Ball jar of dried corn mom put up in 1988 (she died in 1989). I keep it as a memento of my childhood.
Drying corn dates back to days before refrigeration. With sharp paring knives, Gramma, Mom and I would slice the kernels off the slightly cooked ears of cooling corn, careful to scrape the ears so as not to waste any of the sweet core of the kernels or milky liquid.
On the stove mom's two ancient tin corn dryers sat positioned across the burners. Water boiled inside them, and the kernels were spread across the wide, flat tops.
Long after Gramma had gone home and I'd gone to bed, Mom was up, checking on the dehydrating corn, turning it every two hours or so with a spatula to make sure it didn't scorch.
The result was a carmelized corn that, when rehydrated with milk, salt and butter, has a unique, nutty taste--one prized by three generations of Bogarts. I expect my Gramma learned how to dry corn from her mother, who may have learned it from my great-great-Gramma Fell. The Fells emigrated to America from Scotland.
So, anyway, memories of an idyllic girlhood, and thinking about a time, not really so very long ago, when pioneers lived off the land.
Carol Bogart is the new editor of the Sunnyvale Sun. Contact her at cbogart@community-newspapers.com or call 408.200.1055.
