Hope Springs

Friday, May 13, 2022

Marcie Alvis Walker

May 13, 2022

Jonathan Green – Sharing Chores

INVOCATION

Bloom like spring in our hearts, Spirit. Let us be new once again.

PRESENTATION

What could be more hopeful than the breaking of winter into the dawning of spring?

One of my favorite tributes to spring comes from the cookbook The Taste Country Cooking by Edna Lewis. Between recipes, Lewis writes the most beautiful vignettes about her childhood in Freetown, Virginia which was all-Black farming town. After the Civil War, Lewis’ grandfather and other newly emancipated Black people founded the community. Today, I thought I’d share her ode to spring because it is such a glorious psalm of new beginning, blossoming with such a lushly verdant hope.

“Spring” by Edna Lewis
Each season had a particular interesting feature, but spring held something special. After the long spell of winter we welcomed the first warm day of February, heralding the coming of spring.
Often a mother hen would surprise us with a healthy brood of baby chickens that she had hatched in the hayloft and somehow gotten down to the ground. They would be chirping and pecking in the snowy slush of the barnyard. We would pick them up and carry them and the mother into the kitchen and place them in a wooden box behind the cookstove which served as a nursery for early hatched chickens, baby calves, pigs, and lambs that were too weak and unaggressive to compete for food. All such animals would be kept in the kitchen until the severe cold weather was over and they were strong enough to feed themselves.
The quiet routine of the kitchen would give way to the sounds of chirping, pip pip, and baa baa. We were so excited about our kitchen guests that we would set about adopting the most unusual ones for ourselves and we would keep watch over our pick sometimes for a year, or until it was sold, which would be a sad day for us. But there was always a good reason given why it had to be sold. All the realities of life were explained to us as we grew up.
Further evidence of spring would be the arrival of the noisy killdeer, running over the ground as if it were on roller skates, signaling that it was time to begin ploughing. It continued to call out “kill dee, kill dee,” during the ploughing season.
I will never forget spring mornings in Virginia. A warm morning and a red sun rising behind a thick fog gave the image of a pale pink veil supported by a gentle breeze that blew our thin marquisette curtains out into the room, leaving them to fall lazily back. Being awakened by this irresistible atmosphere we would hop out of bed, clothes in hand, rush downstairs, dress in a sunny spot, and rush out to the barn to find a sweet-faced calf, baby pigs, or perhaps a colt.
We always stopped by the hen house to look at the setting hens sitting in their row of nests along the wall. They had to be checked often to see if the eggs were moist enough to hatch properly. I can still remember the moist smell of chickens hatching and making quiet, cuddly noises. The mother hen would fuss and ruffle her feathers, very annoyed at my mother for lifting her from the nest to sprinkle the eggs.
There would be guineas setting under the woodpile where no one could reach and they would appear one day with a brood that was so swift of movement that one could only get a glimpse of them scampering through the weeds.
This was truly a time of birth and rebirth in barnyard, field, and forest.
Early morning visits to the barnyard extended into the woods as well, which was just across the stream from the barn. The quiet beauty in rebirth there was so enchanting it caused us to stand still in silence and absorb all we heard and saw. The palest liverwort, the elegant pink lady’s-slipper displayed against the velvety green path of moss leading endlessly through the woods. Birds flitting back and forth knowing it was spring and looking for food, a spider winding in his catch while his beautiful dew-laden web shimmered and glistened in the early morning sunshine, the early morning sound of the mournful dove, the caw caw of a crow looking for food.
A stream, filled from the melted snows of winter, would flow quietly by us, gurgling softly and gently pulling the leaf of a fern that hung lazily from the side of its bank. After moments of complete exhilaration we would return joyfully to the house for breakfast. Floating out to greet us was the aroma of coffee cooking and meat frying, mingled with the smell of oak wood burning in the cookstove. We would wash our hands and take our places on the bench behind the table made for the children.
Breakfast was about the best part of the day. There was an almost mysterious feeling about passing through the night and awakening to a new day. Everyone greeted each other in the morning with gladness and a real sense of gratefulness to see the new day. If it was a particularly beautiful morning it was expressed in the grace.
Spring would bring our first and just about only fish—shad. It would always be served for breakfast, soaked in salt water for an hour or so, rolled in seasoned cornmeal, and fried carefully in home-rendered lard with a slice of smoked shoulder for added flavor. There were crispy fried white potatoes, fried onions, batter bread, any food left over from supper, blackberry jelly, delicious hot coffee, and cocoa for the children. And perhaps if a neighbor dropped in, dandelion wine was added. With the morning feeding of the animals out of the way, breakfast was enjoyable and leisurely.
Another pleasure was following the plough. I loved walking barefoot behind my father in the newly ploughed furrow, carefully putting one foot down before the other and pressing it into the warm, ploughed earth, so comforting to the soles of my feet.
As I listened to my father sing one of his favorite songs, the chickens from the hen house would flock behind me, picking up all kinds of worms and bugs that were turned up by the plough. The noisy killdeer was still around, guarding her tiny speckled eggs in a nest she had made of small stones.
Now and then the plough would turn up roots of a sassafras bush which we would carry into the house and make into a tea for breakfast the next morning. We also enjoyed tea made from a bush that grew along the streams; used only while in the bud stage, it was known as sweet bud.
Planting season was always accompanied by the twilight arrival of the whippoorwill repeating breathlessly and rapidly “whippoorwill! whippoorwill!” Because of the longer hours of daylight, field work could extend into the evening, and dinner was served at midday.
First spring meals would always be made of many uncultivated plants. We would relish a dish of mixed greens—poke leaves before they unfurled, lamb’s-quarters, and wild mustard. We also had salad for a short period made of either Black-Seeded Simpson, or Grand Rapids, loose-leaf lettuce which bolted as soon as the weather became warm. It was served with thin slices of onion before they begin to shape into a bulb—the tops used as well—in a dressing of vinegar, sugar, and black pepper. It was really more of a soup salad. We would fill our plates after finishing our meal and we adored the sweet and pungent flavor against the crispy fresh flavor of the lettuce and onions.
One usually thinks of lamb as a spring dish but no one had the heart to kill a lamb. The lambs were sold at the proper time and the sheep would be culled—some sold and a few butchered.
My mother would usually buy the head and the forequarter of the mutton, which she cooked by braising or boiling and served with the first asparagus that appeared along the fence row, grown from seed the birds dropped.
There were the unforgettable English peas, first-of-the-season garden crop cooked and served in heavy cream along with sautéed first-of-the-season chicken.
As the new calves came, we would have an abundance of milk and butter, as well as buttermilk, rich with flecks of butter. Rich milk was used in the making of gravies, blanc mange, custards, creamed minced ham, buttermilk biscuits, and batter breads, as well as sour-milk pancakes. And we would gather wild honey from the hollow of oak trees to go with the hot biscuits and pick wild strawberries to go with the heavy cream.
Freetown was a beehive of activity, with everyone caring for crops of new animals, poultry, and garden, gathering dandelions and setting them to wine. People also helped each other by trading seed, setting hens, and exchanging ideas as well. Although this was a hectic time and visiting was put off for a calmer time of year, the neighbors still found time for unforgettable pleasantries. I remember when I was very little, our neighbor Mrs. Towles came over one bright afternoon and invited me for tea as she often did. As I walked along the path behind her, we came upon a nest of colored candy Easter eggs. I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my five years of life. I asked her how did she think they had gotten there, and she replied casually, “I guess the Easter Rabbit must have left them there for you.”
As the weather warmed up and we moved toward summer, the main crops were planted—corn, beans, melons, and peanuts. Sweet potato plants were ready for pulling from the hotbed—a structure made of 4 × 3 × 3 boards stationed in a corner of the garden. The bed was made by filling in a 6-inch layer of fresh stable horse manure that was then covered over with a 4-inch layer of dry oak leaves and a few twigs of green pine needles. A 4-inch layer of old hay was added and that was topped with a 5-inch layer of clean, dry sand. The bed was then covered with a piece of old blanket or canvas and left to heat up for a few days. When the temperature in the hotbed reached 70°, specially selected sweet potatoes were inserted into the sand and the cover replaced. The bed was aired daily, every afternoon when the temperature was at its highest, and sprinkled lightly with warm water during incubation. When the plants reached a height of 5 inches, the bed was left uncovered so that the plants could toughen before setting them in the open ground. Very often other vegetable seed was sown in the bed alongside the potatoes—those were the days before hybrid seed.
We would always save our own seed and plant it from year to year. A few of the vegetables we planted are seldom seen today, such as cymlings, almost flat, rounded, white squash with scalloped edges which matured early and was usually served fried; butter beans; a leafy green known as rape; black-eyed peas served pureed; parsnips, salsify, and root celery. The common herbs were sage, purple basil, chervil, horseradish root, and wild thyme.
No homestead was complete without an orchard and a grape arbor bearing fragrant sweet dessert grapes. Some of the fruits we loved best and thought the most flavorsome for preserving and keeping were Stayman Winesap apples; Kieffer pears, which were sweet and juicy; a variety of deliciously sweet cherries—blackheart, sour red, and a bluish-pink one called Royal Ann; fragrant round, red plums, as well as damsons; and that famous old fruit, the quince. Almost all these fruits we served stewed or used as a filling for cake, as well as preserving. The garden also included a gooseberry bush.
Flowers, too, were an integral part of every homestead, especially perennials such as cowslips, Virginia bluebells, sweet myrrh, rambling roses, and our favorite geranium (which, incidentally, had its origin in Africa, as did the guinea hen, wheat, and many other good things that are part of our table today).
Planting season in Freetown was particularly hectic because everyone planted their crops, set their chickens, and everything else according to the sign of the zodiac. These signs appeared only once in each month and lasted for two or three days. So the ground had to be ready to plant then; if you missed the proper sign, the crop would be thrown back for a month.
It was said that seed that blossomed should be planted when the moon was light, whereas vegetables grown underground should be planted in the dark of the moon. Some of these practices still go on today.
There used to be a big sigh of relief when planting was over, but then we would plunge right into the work of cultivation and raising the new crop of hatched chickens, turkeys, and barnyard animals, at the same time as we watched the hay ripen and looked toward hay-cutting time.
I remember in spring how the bobwhite used to walk around as a decoy, calling “bobwhite, bobwhite” to his mate as she sat nearby on her first hatch. We felt happy to hear him calling out, thinking that somehow this made everything complete, and we would answer him back, saying, “Bobwhite, bobwhite! Are your peaches ripe?”

BENEDICTION

May your hope bloom and multiply. Let it begin…. Let it begin…

Amen.