Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Moon of Falling Leaves

October moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We have moved into the lunar cycle known as the Moon of Falling Leaves to many cultures indigenous to North America, including the Lakota (Sioux), Chippewa, Ojibwe, Arapaho, and Cree.

Growing up on the east coast, the changing color and falling of the leaves were a wonderful and magical time of year for me. There is a transcendent feeling that is brought on by the annual drama of falling leaves. Time stands still for a moment of wonder at the mystery and power of the changing seasons, and the busyness of life and all that seemed important can recede for a moment, dwarfed by the cycles of nature. Autumn has always been my favorite season.

But living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the seasons have a much different meaning than they did on my native east coast. Here, it isn't so much the Moon of the Falling Leaves as it is the Moon of Waiting for Rain. It is hot here now, hotter than it was in August, and has been dry and rainless for many moons. Winter is the rainy season here, and we all feel the pressure of the coming wetness and wonder: when will the rains start? How hard will it rain, and for how long?

The effect of the months of dryness is nowhere as stark as in Southern California right now, where dry Santa Ana winds are blowing out-of-control wildfires from drought-ravaged forests to dried-out chaparral, and everything in the fire's wake is just so much kindling.

This morning's paper claims 13 people dead so far, at least 800 homes lost, and over 80,000 acres burned. The rains can't come soon enough to stop the destruction.

It is a potent reminder that we live in a desert. It is a fact I have been contemplating as I plan a farm tour for my job at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. So I'd like to digress for a moment and let you know about the farm tour, because it is open to the public and those of you in the Bay Area might be interested in attending, and I'd love to have you join us...

Wise Water and Good Earth

A public tour visiting three farms in the Marin County watershed including:

• Marin Sun Farms, a free-range chicken and cattle ranch in Inverness;
• Hog Island Oyster Farm on Tomales Bay; and
• Little Organic Farm in Marshall, where David Little dry-farms a great biodiversity of potatoes.

We'll focus on the issue of water, and how water connects the area's farms, ranches, creeks, and bays. We'll learn how each of these farmers uses, conserves, and protects this precious resource, working with nature to grow nutritious and delicious food. We'll also learn how to shuck an oyster, and we'll have a chance to dig potatoes for our Thanksgiving dinner!

When: November 9, 9am - 4pm
Where: Leaving from the Ferry Building in San Francisco
Who: Open to the public, and geared towards adults (not suitable for small children)
Cost: $25 per person for the public (includes lunch)
How to Reserve a space: Email christine@cuesa.org OR phone me at 415-291-3276 x100

I hope some of you are able to take time out of your busy schedules to join us, and to have a hands-on experience with where your food comes from, who grows it, and how. It's going to be a fun day.

And speaking of busy schedules... Both the Moon of Falling Leaves and the Moon of Waiting for Rain have got me thinking about another thing lately: time. Perhaps because it is such a busy time of year, or perhaps it is because I have been so busy lately, or maybe it's due to the time change, but I am struck more than ever by the almost relentless rush of contemporary urban life. It seems harder and harder to make the time, or find the time, to nourish ourselves.

Even in nature, without the added pressures of modern life, it is a time of rushing. Geese fly overhead, honking and flapping vigorously in a race to get south for the winter. The squirrels in my neighborhood are models of industriousness, collecting food and carrying it back to their homes for storage. On an old-time, self-sufficient farm, this would have been a time of heightened activity as well. The last of the garden's vegetables would need to be put-up for the winter. Meat would need to be cured or smoked or dried. Root vegetables, potatoes, and squashes would be stored up in the root cellar, and dried beans, wheat, corn, and apples would each go into their barrel for use throughout the winter. It would be a time of celebration of the abundant harvest.

At the Farmers Market on Saturday, we went some distance towards keeping this tradition alive, and hosted a Harvest Festival. One of our ranchers brought down two Icelandic sheep -- one white and one black with long flowing fleeces -- and people gathered round to watch them be sheared. It was a highlight of a day filled with fun activities. A spinner came to market, and set up her two spinning wheels, and she encouraged people to try their hand at spinning. We borrowed an old-time apple press, and one of our organic apple farmers brought boxes of apples to be pressed into fresh cider. We had a wagon-full of pumpkins, which people bought and carved. I brought my old butter churn, and quarts of cream, and jars with marbles in them.

Passersby would turn the crank on the churn or shake jars full of cream and watch as it turned to butter before their eyes. Then they tasted the buttermilk and the fresh butter, and took home a little plastic bag full of the butter they had made.

It was magical to watch and to be a part of, as little children discovered something entirely new, and as an older man from Tennessee was inspired to tell me stories of his youth on the farm and how they made the butter in a big barrel churn. I am inspired and heartened by those moments that connect us to our history and to our memory. I am so happy when a thirty-something city-dweller looks at me open-eyed and asks: "Is that how you make butter? From cream??!" All the work in putting it together fades in comparison to the reward of watching people's eyes light up.

For my part, I only wish that doing those old-fashioned seasonal tasks didn't seem like such a luxury. Over a week ago I bought cucumbers for pickling, but still haven't gotten to it. I did make a small pot of tomato sauce yesterday from fresh tomatoes, and I'll be interested to see how that works out. I must admit that I am nostalgic for a culture that was more connected to the seasons and to the land, one where making tomato sauce from the garden's harvest, or apple butter from the fruit of the backyard tree, or pickles from the vegetables that hang heavy on the vine was an integral part of community life -- one that meant wise use of resources, including time.

Nowadays, when you do these things, it has an aura of leisure and luxury -- a kind of Martha Stewart resonance that says you are well-off enough to spend time playing in the kitchen. I resent the notion that activities that were once a matter of survival and cultural identity have become "hobbies." Of course it is true that we live in an economic system that makes home-scale food processing -- once a financial necessity for a working class family -- seem obsolete.

The push towards industrialization and centralization of the food industries has been touted as our great benefactor -- as if now that we are no longer spending our days canning tomatoes we have so much more time for other, loftier things. But it seems to me that we only have more time for more disconnected and meaningless work, which we have to do in order to survive in this overly commodified culture of ours, where everything has a price and every price is a premium. At least if you spend your day canning tomatoes, you have a real, tangible, and immediate sense of accomplishment -- you have made a concrete step towards providing for your family for the winter. But in our busy workdays, too often it feels like the hurrier we go, the behinder we get.

In other words, I'm not sure that it's working. Are we happier? Are we better off? Are we more secure? Are we safer than we've ever been? I buy canned tomatoes at the grocery store like everybody else, but I am not quite sure whether they represent a great boon or a deep loss, or a little bit of both.

Nature, for her part, is carrying on largely oblivious to the trajectory of human societies. The leaves still fall from the trees, and California still waits for rain. The Santa Ana winds still blow, wildfires still burn, and all the hoses in L.A. (filled with water that has travelled a mind-boggling distance from the mountains to the desert) don't seem to be able to stop the flames.

But if all we are is dust in the wind, and none of it really matters, I for one would like to take a moment to churn cream into butter, and watch the leaves fall. I'd like to take a day and go visit some chickens and dig some potatoes, and get the feel of the good earth under my nails, and try to learn something from the wisdom of water.

Call it obsolete, call me nostalgic, call what I do a "hobby" if you must. But to me the fall harvest, the color of turning leaves, and cream that becomes butter are still great miracles and mysteries. I can't pretend or presume to be beyond them.

Falling Leaves remind us that life is short, so seize the day! Carve a pumpkin and dress up for Halloween, feel the presence of spirits moving, and try to catch a glimpse of a witch stirring her cauldron.

She might just be cooking down tomatoes into sauce, stealing a moment back from this busy, busy life, to remember...