Pickling Green Walnuts at Peak Summer

We're rolling with the toil at the photosynthetic apex of the growing season

I think we’re at the peak of summer. If I’m wrong about this, I’ll correct this statement in the future, self-correction being a lost art among many folks, specifically men, in the permaculture / regenerative agriculture space. But I digress, and for now, I do declare we’re at the peak of the season, in all its stress and striving.

What I mean, in relation to the farm year, is that we are at full expansion. Our responsibilities for the things we steward are at an apex. We are helping to build flesh while the grass grows, moving herds of goats and cattle, flocks of ducks, turkeys, chickens with their attending dogs, and lumbering cohorts of swine in an outward spiral, across tallgrass prairie and through the dappled draws and shady, deciduous bottomlands.

I blame it on the sun. Photosynthetically, the getting is good. The plants grow, and they must be cared for. Sugars form, and they must be gathered and stored for shorter days ahead. And we have ample daylight in which to work. We tend pastures, gardens, orchards, tree plantings and hoophouses full of mostly growing, mostly thriving things that need weeding, watering, pruning, protection, trellising, bug-smooshing and even harvesting and processing. We mix and apply coats of earthen plaster to our humble straw-bale home, the forever unfinished project of our shelter and survival, and work to rebuild the outdoor kitchen destroyed by fire nearly two years ago, straining our bodies and scratching our heads as join and raise an intertwined puzzle of wildwood timber. We leave trails of tools and tread paths through the brush and brambles, pausing to pluck sweet berries. Often, it is damned hot with no break in sight, no shade to shelter beneath. Sometimes it rains, for which I’m thankful (not to any individual, group, or deity, just in general), but rain means dashing about to stash tools, covering racks of curing onions and garlic, and pulling essential laundry off the line. It means wet seed packets, damp socks, and a million shallow, gleaming basins full of wriggling mosquito larvae. If we only watched more YouTube videos instead of engaging in this sloppy and maddening work, I’m sure we’d figure out how to better address these inconveniences by working less and purchasing the proper solution.

Vegetative growth has been has been vigorous with the sudden rains.

Drought here in Northeast Missouri is not over, but we’ve been downgraded from “Exceptional Drought” to “Extreme Drought”, and I’ll take it for now. The bit of rain we’ve received has ushered in lush growth of the type that keeps us chained to our work, bowing to the photosynthetic process as we manipulate our livestock across the expanding swards of grass. Food is abundant, so long as it’s gathered and preserved, and we hedge our bets and put up today what may not be available next week. I have just begun the process of brine-fermenting a passel full of immature green walnut fruits. In my time here, I've been getting to know our black walnut trees a little bit. Some of them drop nuts worth harvesting, husking, cracking and eating, but many of them do not. If timely rains refuse to fall late in the season, even those from the best trees will not fill out well, and so I'm playing around with pickled green walnut fruits. It’s a strategy, for sure.

I can't say if these will taste any good, and if I'm wrongheaded in this experiment, I will not fail to admit as much. Pickled green walnut is an English delicacy, if that tells you anything. They might not make the spiciest of foods over there, but once in a while, they'll throw down on something with a definite flavor, if nothing else. I don't plan on having to survive on pickled green walnuts in an “End Times” type scenario (that's what friends are for), but I do reckon there's value in playing with the process and opening up the possibilities in an uncertain future. And who knows, maybe they'll end up tasting like sweet potato pie. I'm thinking they will more closely resemble something that I wasn't supposed to put in my mouth, which happens to me a lot. Anyhow, I learned about it in a book, not on the internet, so it has got to be safe.

Long bean vines are approaching the peak of this hoophouse.

There are probably better things to eat right now. The patch of lambsquarters I left in the hoophouse is getting to be about six feet tall... I'll be dehydrating them for the winter once we can string together two sunny enough days. Berries are on, peas are giving up, and my bed of Whaley's Cabbage Collards are massively productive. Having cleared out garlic and annual onions from the garden, I now have ample space to seed for fall crops like turnips, carrots, rutabagas, and daikon radish. Around here, several old men whose agricultural wisdom shall not be challenged have said the words to me, “July 25, wet or dry” as a sort of mnemonic rhyming incantation (that doesn't technically rhyme) regarding the best time to plant turnips. Turnips do fine here, and the pigs enjoy them greatly, after a frost. I reckon turnips are more sure of a bet than the walnut pickles, and they're usually ready to harvest right around Halloween time, making them the perfect crop for bobbing games, apples being far too precious in our fickle growing conditions. But maybe I'm looking forward to autumn more than I should.

Presently, I am tirelessly keeping up with the needs of this project. Excepting that actually, I am tired. And I'm not keeping up. I hear tell that the nights have grown seven minutes longer since the solstice, but haven't noticed, and I'm beginning to build up an unfortunate sleep deficit. But, that's the season we're in. Perhaps some day it will be different, or easier, and often that's what I think I'm working towards. At one time I'd estimated that it would be a decade of hard work before our infrastructure and systems were implemented. Then I could set back on my laurels, perhaps giving a misleading if not downright inspiring TedTalk, make a little cash, and sell laminated Venn-diagrams and flow charts, never accepting any corrections on the matter. A solid plan that’s worked before. It's been about that time, ten years, and the antique rocking chair I planned to sit in and look out at my accomplishments is just a catch-all for filthy work clothes.

And maybe that's the thing: the hustle is real. For at least some readers, the world that myself and others depict might seem like a more fulfilling, authentic, enjoyable vision of life than 9-5 employment under capitalism. And maybe it is. But it is still a rat race, nonetheless, sometimes in the literal sense of having to race against rats when the corn is ripe. At times it is utterly depleting. Doing the work and riding the rhythm of peak photosynthetic activity, chasing pigs through the low branches of elder, speckled in their dropped blossoms, kneeling in the sun and smooshing squash bugs 'til the air fills with their green apple Jolly Rancher smell, and even writing this damned almanac is no longer my pursuit of a dream of a simple and fulfilled life. It's the pursuit of survival, for myself and my kin, my ecosystem, and maybe our species, on days when I'm feeling extra ambitious. I don't think it’s extra unusual to put forth an effort for survival; we're wired to survive as a species, in spite of some of our favorite activities. In my worst moments, and they usually occur once a week or so, I will ask myself, “What am I doing with my life?” And then I keep working. Like any path, there are joys, I suppose. I wouldn’t know how to better spend this time, and evening approaches, eventually.

Our ever-engaging kitchen project lurches forward.

The crickets are chirruping quick and sonorous out there. The dew collects on grassy thickets, ready to be laid down by my honed blade first thing in the morning. A young screech owl is perched on the garden gate, a sure omen that it's past my bedtime. Tomorrow's workday may be one minute shorter, but in that abbreviated time I will move from toft to croft and back again, dispensing and gathering, expanding my activities and reaping some of what we'll require in times of depletion, even if that's just a strange jar of pickles. If I'm proven wrong about this, you'll find me reclined in that rocking chair, but I promise to admit my errors, life being too short to hold onto an untruth.

This concludes my TedTalk,

BB