Today’s Gleanings

I’m hearing from all around what a busy fall it is, and I can tell you, I know all about it. I have stepped into a whole new level of bustling activity in the past weeks. The garden patches need watering, picking and preserving. The wild foods beckon to be plucked off bush, vine and tree. There is much work to help with in my children’s amazing third grade class at our Waldorf school. I’m doing a lot more and sleeping a lot less. Even in this whirlwind, I am thoroughly loving Autumn. No other time of year offers the rich bounty, the fiery colors, the warm hazy days and crisp nights, the abundance and the sense of shedding to make way for something new. I’m drinking it all in.

Even though I have plenty of foraged fruit piled in baskets all over my counter, my back porch and my pantry all waiting to be processed and stored, I still go on urban gleaning excursions while I wait for my kids to get out of school on our two short days a week. Yesterday, I took a friend along to show her all the bounty that can still be had even in these hard economic times. We skimmed over some fruit trees I had picked from the previous week at a student rental near the university. I gathered just a few more apples and pears to dry, and she collected some good saucing apples.

Then we swung over to another alley by campus student housing, to check on the concord grapes. They were ripe! Granted, with the late frosts this spring, there were nowhere near as many grapes as last year, but still enough to fill a couple of baskets. I’m going to try making some canned grape juice suggested by my neighbor, where you pack a quart jar full of grapes, pour a boiling honey water mixture over it, and process in a boiling water bath. Then you simply take the grapes out before drinking. I love easy canning recipes.

It’s reassuring somehow that even when the economy is in the pits, and a late, cold spring results in a scant fruit growing year, there is still plenty if you really look for it.