Posts Tagged ‘local food’
growing and gathering – picking berries with friends
As I am deciding how to organise my poetry manuscript on ‘growing and gathering’ local foods, I am considering the themes of the various poems. I think these themes will become the sections in my manuscript.
One of the first themes to emerge, perhaps the easiest to examine, is about ‘relationships’.
Although I have often picked berries alone, my best memories are of picking berries with members of my family. Both my Mom and Dad loved to pick berries. My Dad was a fast picker and I was always in silent competition with him to pick the most berries… I never won. My Mom picked berries quickly, but took the time to enjoy the fresh air, the blue sky and the expanse of the berry field. When I think of picking berries with her, I feel calm and a little lazy. My relationship with my mother-in-law was also shaped by our many berry-picking experiences; when I pick raspberries, I hear her quiet laughter in the breeze.
As I write poetry for my ‘growing and gathering’ manuscript, I have explored my relationships with the various people in my life.
Some of these are based on real experiences I have had picking berries or gathering greens. Examples include poems about trying to find an old berry field, now grown over, or how changes in a relationship can be observed over the years in the annual picking of berries. Although most of the poems are about plants, I have included production of other local foods – so a poem about beekeeping, for example, explores how two people interact during a small emergency.
In other cases, the gathering of local foods is a metaphor for some aspect of a relationship, whether good and bad. At least some of these metaphors are related to the characteristics of plants or animals – for example, the serrated edges of leaves, the slipperiness of a trout, the gentle feel and fragrance of Bedstraw, or the bitterness of taste common to so many ‘salad’ greens.
Some of the metaphor is based on the place where plants grow. Examples include the seclusion of many berry-picking spots, or the physical spaces created by rows of corn plants.
As I look over the Table of Contents for my manuscript, I realise some poems will be stronger if placed within another theme. So I have moved, for example, a poem about picking berries over a three-week period from the theme on ‘relationships’ to a theme about ‘change’.
This consideration of the themes in my poetry has given me a good start to organising the poems, and identifying gaps I have to fill. I know now there are lots of gaps, and many poems yet to write!
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Bitter Blue
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of all the silvery summer days we spent none so warm sun on
granite boulders round blue berry field miles across hazy miles
away from hearing anything but bees
and berries
plopping in the pail
~
beside you I draped my lazy bones on bushes crushed berries and
thick red leaves over moss dark animal trails nudged between rocks
baking berries brown musk rising to meet blue heat
or the still fleet scent
of a waxy berry bell
~
melting in my mouth crammed with fruit sometimes pulled from
laden stems more often scooped from your pail full ripe blue pulp
and the bitter shock of a hard green berry never ripe
or a shield bug
with frantic legs
and an edge to her shell
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Published as: ‘Bitter Blue’, Summer 1993, The Amethyst Review 1 (2)
Published on www.nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com on July 31, 2011
© Jane Tims 2012
Warning: 1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.from the pages of an old diary – blueberries and other local foods
My new writing project, ‘growing and gathering’, focuses on local foods and finding food close to home.
A source of information and inspiration for me is the set of my great-aunt’s diaries, written from 1943 to 1972. From her diaries, I have a very good idea of how they obtained their food, and how they used local foods to supplement their needs.
Most of their food was obtained from the grocery store – in 1957, there was at least one grocery store in the community, and by 1967, they had an IGA. There is no doubt some goods came from ‘away’. For example, my great-aunt wrote about making coconut and pineapple squares for a Women’s Missionary Society meeting (Sept. 30, 1957).
Local goods, however. were used whenever possible. For example, my great-aunt bought eggs from her sister, and chickens from her brother. She also obtained vegetables and raspberries from her brother’s farm, apples from friends and relatives, deer meat from friends and relatives, and lobsters from Wallace, a near-by community. By 1967, my great-aunt and great-uncle also kept a garden at her brother’s farm, a few miles away.
Obtaining local foods included picking local berries. In July and August of 1957, my great-aunt went four times for wild blueberries. Her gratitude and pleasure at getting these berries comes through in her words: ‘ got quite a few’ (July 31, 1957) and ‘got a nice lot.’ (Aug. 21, 1957). She also wrote about picking grapes and currants.
Some of the berries were eaten right away – for example, my great-aunt made a blueberry pie on August 1, 1957. The rest was preserved for the winter. On August 16, 1957 my great-aunt put up 5 quarts of blueberries, to supplement the applesauce, pears, peaches, sweet cucumber pickles, and tomato chow she mentions preparing on other days. Others in the family also made preserves and shared them with her – in 1967, her nephew (my uncle) brought her three bottles of peach, apple and choke cherry jelly he had made.
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an offering of berries
~
she stands on the stoop
offers a box
a brimming pint
of berries
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I take her hand, we ripple
through the pasture, strew
blue ribbons over bushes, stir
a blueberry jelly sky, dance
with dragonflies
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she waits on the stoop
her brow a riddle, please
take this gift, blueberries
in a simple
wooden
basket
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Warning: 1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.
© Jane Tims 2012
nichepoetryandprose 