Come the Revolution

Archive for May, 2010

Botanically speaking, rhubarb is a vegetable, but a clever New York court decreed in 1947 that, since we use it like a fruit, we should call it a fruit. This suits me fine, since it means that even in Vermont (where we won’t have fresh local strawberries until late June at best) we can expect the first fruit of the season in May.

Some long time ago, my grandfather put a patch of rhubarb out behind the farmhouse. It grew next to an old shed still affectionately referred to as the chicken house, in the shade of a big thorn tree. I grew up eating the stuff — in the summer my cousins and I would pull big stalks off the plant and dip the ends in sugar, gnawing off big puckery bites and going back for more. As far back as I can remember, we young’ns were the only ones who ever picked it.

The chicken house came down a few years back, and this year the thorn tree finally stuck the wrong person and was cut into firewood, but the rhubarb patch is still there and thriving. When we visited my family last week I took the opportunity to harvest a couple of pounds. I can’t wait to move somewhere with a little bit of land, so I can take a division of that prolific plant.

Last week I broke out the canner and made a simple batch of rhubarb jam. It’s exciting to have something fresh in the pantry, and to already have something to show for this season: the first fruits of spring, all saved up in a jar.

(That hat, by the way? We picked it up on our visit to Hancock Shaker Village — another fixture of my childhood.)

We’re ready. And by “ready,” I mean relatively prepared for all the successes and failures that make up a farming life.

When we moved to Vermont just over a year ago, there wasn’t much we were sure of. We knew that we had work, from mid-April through October, at an organic vegetable farm; we knew we had an affordable apartment with a month-to-month lease; we knew we had each other. Beyond that, a lot of things were up in the air.

For starters, I didn’t know for certain that I would even like farming. I had a hunch that I would, but then I’d also once had a hunch that I’d really like haggis (and I’ll just let you guess how that one turned out). I knew that it would be hard work, and that my wimpy citified muscles and never-leave-home-without-it inhaler were a liability. There was a pretty good chance that I would stink at farm work. Could I hack it?

We also had no idea how long we’d be staying in Vermont. When the season was over, would we be able to find other work? Would we even want to stay in this area? Where would we go next?

The season came and went, and it was as hard as I expected. But I made it through, proved a valuable member of the team (most days), learned so much I felt like I was in grad school, and oh hey — I loved it. I won’t say I loved every minute of it, because there were some minutes that felt like torture. Like, for example, the many hundreds of minutes that we spent planting onions in the unseasonably cold, wet New England spring. Overall, though, it was a good experience, and that good experience has led us to the next step.

We’re looking for a little plot of land of our own.

We’re not looking to buy property right now. Our finances are such that five years ago, someone would’ve certainly tried to sell us on one of those infamous adjustable rate mortgages; now most bankers would probably look at us and laugh. We’re doing respectably well, and might even qualify for a USDA-funded loan, but we see no sense in rushing into a purchase that might not be exactly what we need.

Instead, we’re looking into leasing opportunities in the areas we’d most like to live and work. We’re putting together a business plan, investigating niche markets, and preparing want-ads for local papers. We’re scanning the agricultural internet for opportunities that fit our needs.

Cian, ever the realist, is anxious that I not get my heart set on having our own land to work by next spring, but then he had the same concerns a year and a half ago when we were looking for somewhere to apprentice. I have phenomenal luck and a knack for landing in just the right place, with a little help from friends and providence. So here it is, the official announcement: we’re looking for our Ten Acres Enough, and I just know we’re going to find it.