The Peaceable Kingdom

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I guess I'll have to mention the fruit sooner or later. Truth is, we have nothing to brag about in this department (unless you count the rhubarb, which produced plenty for the table, storage and giveaway). OK. (Deep breath). Here's the grand fruity total:

PEACHES. Superb. All ten of them.

PLUMS, APRICOTS, PEARS. Still sleeping. They blossomed in the rain. Perhaps the bees couldn't make it.

APPLES. Three whole apples.

QUINCES. Loaded with pretty blossoms. That's all.

RASPBERRIES. A fair crop, but they're sour!

GRAPES. Few but good. We haven't bought grapes for several years (so these tasted extra good to us) but we lost our later grapes to the woodchuck (we hadn't bagged them because birds didn't seem to be a problem).

BUSH CHERRIES. Good crop but the chickens got out and ate them.

SOUR CHERRIES. There were eight.

STRAWBERRIES. Picked 51 quarts of good Robinsons . . . but will someone please remind me not to buy everbearing plants again? They're very seedy in the summer.

BLUEBERRIES. A fair crop, which is embarrassing for we've had such good blueberries in other places. Come to think of it, though, that was when we had a polite and manageable garden and gave them more attention. Big dose of leaf mold and wood chips coming up!

ELDERBERRIES. Several gallons of big, juicy berries. Less intense in flavor than the wild ones . . . but good.

We still eat more wild fruit than tame and, by now, we have our own secret haunts where we've come to depend on the trees and bushes. We even talk half seriously about making the rounds of our wild favorites with a carload of manure.

The largest of our two pigs—the barrow—was butchered in early fall. He gained fast because he hogged all three sections of the feed trough. The gilt didn't get much as long as he was around. But, as Mike noted, he wasn't above enjoying the warmth of the she-pig's muddy bulk when nights turned cool.

The meat is very lean, probably because we fed the hogs mostly greens. The female, though, (due to be butchered in December) may be fatter because we've fed her more corn. Our neighbor lets us pick up the dropped ears his mechanical pickers miss. We've scavenged a good many bushels already and plan to make a small corn crib by covering the rototiller crate with chicken wire.

These cool, tangy days are good for biking. We steer an erratic course, swerving to avoid the last of the woolly bear caterpillars making their slow way across the road. In Loren Eisely's book THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, he describes a woolly bear, hurrying "across a ledge, going late to some tremendous transformation, but about this he knows as little as I." I've always liked that and find myself returning to it each fall as I munch on ground cherries and gather pods and wisps of dried things.

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