Googling the phrase “gardening and mental health” produces 34 million hits. If digging in the dirt contributes all that much to peace of mind, then my husband must be the most stable person I know. Twelve years ago, Pete took early retirement and turned our brushy 10 acres of land into a small organic farm. When planting season comes, he, like most other farmers, is overwhelmed with work. There is never enough time.
The weather is either his enemy or his best friend. Too much rain over a 48-hour period in May flooded a field where he had carefully planted six different kinds of potatoes. Like most Irish, I believe that it’s impossible to have too many potatoes. Most survived, but there are bare patches where a few of my beloved tubers didn’t make it.
Weather is just the start of a farmer’s worries. Already, some little insect is nibbling at the broccoli and the kale, but the garlic crop, planted in October, looks like straight green soldiers marching in rows. They will be ready to harvest next month. There are three kinds of lettuce coming up, dozens of tomato plants already flowering, and the peppers look good this year. We had a late frost last month that spurred us to frantically cover some of the vegetables with bedsheets. Nearly all made it. Some plants, like the spinach, shrugged off the cold. Those rows look so green they would make Popeye jealous.
But to me, these early plants are not the true glory of what my husband has helped create here. Instead, I look for berries. More than flowers, they are how I know there is still some life left in our nearly 40-year marriage.
Early in the first years of Pete’s experiment he talked eagerly about planting fruit trees. I nodded encouragingly and mentioned, offhand, that I loved raspberries. That very day Pete went out and by evening he had planted 30 raspberry plants. They looked unimpressive, exactly like a row of sticks. But soon they were sprouting branches and within two months I was harvesting rosy red and yellow raspberries. They have lasted for years. So when I wonder if my husband loves me, I pick a raspberry.
The driveway is lined with still more fruit bushes, gooseberries and, one of my favorites, Tayberries. Developed in the Tay River Valley in Scotland in 1979, they are a perfect combination of raspberries and blackberries. They share the scarlet color but are not the fragile divas that are raspberries. They are large like blackberries. The only problem? Thorns. Lots of ‘em. But picking them is worth it.
We have 25 blueberry bushes that Pete planted 10 years ago to supplement the dozen bushes a wise farmer planted 40 years before we arrived. They are all different, producing some large berries, some small, and give us fruit from July 4 to the third week of August. Blueberries could only be picked in the wild until the second decade of the 20th century, escaping all attempts to cultivate them. They died after being transplanted.
This befuddled scientists until two smart people combined their efforts to figure it out: Elizabeth White, a New Jersey farmer, and Frederick Colville from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. White lived near the New Jersey Pine Barrens and persuaded her neighbors to bring her the healthiest blueberry plants, promising that if they could be cultivated, they would be named after the families who found them. She gave cuttings to Colville, who figured out that blueberries like acidic soil - like the very pine forests where they flourished. Nurseries had always added too much compost and manure, killing the acid-loving plants. Colville’s varieties are still flourishing today. History aside, they just taste good.
Yet the fruit that I most look forward to is the very first that appears: Strawberries. In the early days of the Covid pandemic, in March 2020, I soothed my nerves by obsessively weeding the plants in our fields. (That mental health thing again). I practically used a microscope to get every last errant weed out of the rows of fruit, and as a result we were buried in strawberries by mid-June. With the pandemic eased, I’m not nearly as anxious and so the weeds are vying with this month’s harvest. But strawberries make me smile, if only because of a story about our family’s century-old strawberry shortcake recipe.
My great-grandmother, known to all as Nana, had a neighbor who was known far and wide for her delicious shortcakes. Every year, she won a ribbon at the county fair when swooning judges gobbled her sweet shortcakes, drowning in strawberries. Finally, one day, Nana asked her neighbor if she would share the recipe. And her neighbor basically said, hell, no. She wasn’t about to divulge the secret to her success.
So, since desperate times call for desperate measures, Nana did what apparently came naturally to her. She stole the recipe. What’s a little thievery among neighbors? Nana waited until the award-winning cook left to run some errands. Then she sneaked in her house, rifled through her recipe box, copied the recipe, and it’s been in my family for the last 100 years.
I offer it here to all of you.
Nana's Shortcake
Grease a square pan and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Combine in a large bowl:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup of butter cut in pieces (1/2 stick)
(either room temp which makes this easy or cut in cold butter with two knives).
Mix.
Beat in:
One egg, slightly beaten
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
One teaspoon vanilla
Bake, 30-35 minutes.
The top should be golden brown. It will be lumpy on top, not smooth. Just combine until it hangs together.
Enjoy it; it’s really good, well worth a ribbon at the country fair. I’m happy to save you the trouble of breaking into your neighbor’s kitchen to get it. Don’t forget the whipped cream.
Cheaters sometimes do prosper!
Mouthwatering writing. Maybe I can get Jim to make your stolen strawberry shortcake recipe. Meanwhile, I’m drooling while thinking about it obsessively... 🍓‼️💕