An update on peaches

After the rains, peach flavor was noticeably less intense, and the sugar noticeably diluted. That's because prunus species can really uptake free water, especially close to harvest. So for about a week now, I haven't been eating too many peaches. But this morning, I ate a peach of the variety "Early Red Haven" and it was a great peach. Not outstanding mind you, because the water was still there, and it made the flavor a bit bland.

But if it stays dry over the next few days, I predict we'll be back in the tall clover, just in time for "Red Haven," the main season variety that made Michigan peaches famous. "Red Haven" was introduced by Stanley Johnston, peach breeder working for Michigan State University, in 1940. Today, it is the world's most widely planted peach variety.

A few growers in Berrien County made their first picking of Red Haven yesterday. But it's actually the second and third pickings that are the best. So wait about a week if it's dry, and buy Red Haven for the freezer or to can. But if it rains a couple of inches or more, wait until the Flamin' Fury varieties PF 15a, PF 17, and PF 23; they're just as good. Other great varieties for eating and preserving include Glo Haven, Loring, and Bellaire.

I'll post about later varieties later.

We're all in the same boat

Most everything I do professionally is connected to food. Most everything you do is likewise connected to food. Think about it and you’ll agree food is one of life’s true essences, and you can’t do very much of anything without it. Pretty soon you’re going to get hungry, and then soon thereafter, you’re going to get hungry again. That’s just the way it is with us. Over, and over, and over again we’re all going to get hungry often.

So we’re in the same boat—we’re all connected by that essence, like an unbreakable thread binding us, one to another. And so far, the only way to disconnect from food is to die. Maybe someday we won’t be so connected like that, but I doubt it.

Some of us though, know more about that essence than the rest of us. Some of us actually work inside the essence of food doing more than eating it. We’re the ones either to seek out as people who can get the best food, the tastiest food, the healthiest and safest food, or as people who know how to use food as a tool to make money.

Either way, I’m one of those people who know a fair amount about food—where it comes from, how it gets here; how it’s produced; how to produce it; its value in terms of nutrition and enjoyable eating, and its value in terms of its use as a profit center for some really big corporations, and some really small ones too.

And I can tell you what you’re eating today is mostly a part of an incredibly industrialized agricultural complex with a concentrated base vying for a share of the $1 Trillion food market annually in the U.S. And the nutritional value of that food is squat next to its value as a profit maker for the likes of ADM, Cargill, ConAgra, IBP/Tyson, Kraft, and a handful of other huge members of the U.S. Industrialized Agriculture Complex.

A bit too dry...and some relief....

According to the National Weather Service drought monitoring data, Berrien County, MI has been too dry. Actually, we've been in a fairly serious drought. Non irrigated crops have suffered, and some crops have been destroyed.

But this morning about 3:00AM, I was awakened by a sound that had become a memory too distant to immediately recognize, like some 50's tunes. Rain. Light, steady, rain.

I got up, walked out onto the deck, and sure enough, a pretty nice shower seemed to have set in. It lasted about an hour like that. Just slow and steady, the kind that will sink in and not run off.

Then as I left for work about 5:15AM, it started really coming down! We must have received an inch or slightly more in those two hours, and we needed it. Still, fruit quality is almost unbelievable this year. Oh sure, fruit size is off, owing to the dry conditions, but man, the intensity of flavor and the sweetness of the fruit is truly vintage.

If you're reading this and are close enough to Berrien County to make a drive here, do not leave without peaches. Blueberries too are incredibly sweet this year, and intensely flavored.

And now that the soil has been recharged, let it once again be dry, dry, dry....

It's what makes for vintage fruit years. The last one was 2005, and it's great to have two so close together.

Some facts behind the mess we're in

Each one of these bulleted points can make a post for this blog. The trick is stealing the time. Who or what gets robbed is always the challenge. Today, I'm robbing the laundry. Hmmm, it feels pretty good:

• U.S. is increasingly a corporate, industrialized system of production agriculture.

• The U.S. is a net importer of food. (2005, 2006, & projected for 2007)

• The U.S. is a fast food nation.

• The demise of our local processing industry.

• No storefronts for local foods.

• Very poor infrastructure for local food distribution.

• Very poor local access to locally-produced foods.

• Almost no year-round access to local foods.

• No local “think tank” for public policy research on food issues.

• Food safety and food security not being addressed locally.

• Loss of farms and farmland (60% and 57% respectively).

• Few beginning farmers/average age of farmer in Berrien County is 62.

• Skyrocketing external costs of food (fossil fuels, other inputs).

• No mobilizing force for residents, farmers, and organizations.

• Consumer ignorance regarding importance of agriculture to the local economy.

• No programs assisting limited resource consumers in procurement of locally-produced foods.

• No organizations promote institutional buying of local foods.

• Consumer ignorance of varieties, grading, home processing, and uses of non-industrialized food.

• No programs challenging youth about agriculture.

• No public school curriculum providing education about important food facts.

• The steep decline of specialty crops (strawberries, peaches, apples, currants, gooseberries, plums).

• No local resource for food programs, grants, food business development.

Peach season is upon us

If the current weather pattern holds, we’ll experience a vintage year for deciduous perennial fruit. Definitely, non-irrigated sweet cherries, raspberries, and blueberries have benefited from the dry conditions in Berrien County, Michigan. But peach season is now upon us, and so far, the first two varieties being picked are firmly in the outstanding class.

Harbinger is a small (under 2.5”), red, fuzzy, and a bit oblong variety of clingstone peach. Most years, this cultivar is a good to very good eating peach, once you get the fuzz off, and deal with the very clingy flesh. But this year, Harbinger brings a special treat to the start of Berrien County’s peach season; they are sweet, sweet, sweet, and very peachy tasting.

Flamin Fury PF-1 is the other cultivar now being harvested. It too is eating like a peach ought to eat, sweet and juicy. It too, is a clingstone, but one of larger size, and far less fuzzy.

And as the season progresses, peaches become larger in size and are freed easily from the pit. And if it stays dry, dry, dry, the varieties are only going to get better and better for eating. I’ll keep you posted. But if you’re buying peaches today, don’t be afraid; they’re really outstanding just now.

Fruit Salad

My parents celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary yesterday. My brother and my two sisters opened my parent's little farm to friends and family for a few hours, and we fed our guests as much local food as we could.

On the positive side, we utilized the following fresh, local produce:
Knob and green onions
Cilantro
Summer squash
Sweet corn
New red creamer potatoes
New red beets
Black sweet cherries
Red raspberries
Blueberries
Cantaloupe

Not so positively, we served delicious, but long-traveled shrimp, from who knows where besides Costco, and yellow cake from Sara Lee (but with a home-made frosting, beautifully garnished with fresh raspberries and blueberries, thanks to a talented niece). My youngest sister made a fabulous sauce from the cilantro, etc., and then mixed in the shrimp. Though from far away no doubt, the shrimp were excellent, and the other salad components sublime.

But it was the fruit salad--only the watermelon had more than a hundred miles on it--that emerged as the food of choice. And it was funny how people reacted to it.

I want to explain that reaction, but first, I'll explain how I put the salad together, as it was my job to procure the fruit and prepare the dish: The watermelons were huge, over thirty pounds each. I cut the tops off of them about three quarters up from their base, and hollowed out the bases to make big serving bowls for the salad. Then I cut little triangles around the top edges, like small teeth carved out of a jack-o-lantern. I seeded the watermelon and cut it into chunks big enough to explode inside your mouth. Then I cut and seeded the 'lopes into chunks about half the size of the watermelon. Muskmelon, as they're often called, are pretty intensely flavored most of the time, and they can easily overpower the more delicate subtleties of other fruit.

Next, I washed and pitted the sweet cherries, Cavalier, a variety known for it's crunchy texture, sweet flesh and black color; one of the best sweets grown in these parts. Then I washed the blueberries and red raspberries. Next, I mixed the melons and blueberries in a very large stainless steel mixing bowl, in roughly equal parts by weight volume. The cherries have a very dark juice that will stain the melon chunks, and the raspberries are far too delicate to hold up under a vigorous mixing. So when the two melon types and blueberries were well mixed, I gently folded in the raspberries. Lastly, I dried the pitted cherries in some toweling, and, being careful not to be too rough, folded them into the mix. Finally, I filled the hollowed-out watermelon with the now completed salad, and added a large wooden spoon to finish the task. It was beautiful. But its beauty was dimmed by its taste....

I stood back from the crowd and watched as our visitors spooned conservative servings of the fruit salad on their plates. Soon however, conservative portions grew to platefuls by those seeking seconds. Then thirds. And more than a few went back four times!

Not a single person could possibly have eaten that salad and not made indistinguishable noises. I kept pretty busy keeping the watermelon bowl full.

Being born and raised inside the Great Fruit Belt of Michigan's Southwest, I've known all my life how a piece of fruit should taste. I've had the pleasure, and experienced the awe, of consuming a vast array of fruit when it was at its peak for flavor. I've known, forever it seems, about the noises people make when they're eating the best of the best; they are oblivious to their own noise, being in a flow state of culinary satisfaction. Only one other activity I know of, causes such a reaction.

And so it is with eating a fresh fruit salad, when its fresh that is, and when the fruit are perfect, and when that fruit is from Berrien County, Michigan.