Thank goodness the temperatures have dropped and just like that it seems like fall. Summer gardens are finishing up and the last of the sweet corn and tomatoes can be found at the farmers markets. However, it doesn’t mean the end of our growing season – winter squashes, greens, and sweet potatoes are on their way. After all of the tomatoes and cucumbers, I really look forward to eating kale, butternut squash and apples! I love the fall season and it truly is a time of connecting with our season and celebrating the past year’s harvest.
This past weekend on my visit to Highland, Kentucky’s Community Market, the Old Order Mennonite Community near Lafayette, TN, they had begun harvesting sugar cane and making sorghum. Many of the fields still wait to be cut and the harvest will take up most of September. Steam rose from the cooking house and the air had a wonderful sweet smell. Teams of draft horses worked the sugar press. The raw liquid runs down into the cooking area. The cooking apparatus may be a bit updated then the way the old timers made it, but the process is basically the same from the past hundred years. Taking home a warm jar of sorghum is almost a thrilling experience – I know the folks who grew the sugar cane and watched it grow on my semi regular trips to the market over the summer and then I brought a jar. We’ll use it all through the year in cooking and baking biscuits.
It reminds me of growing up amongst the apple orchards and being a part of the apple harvest. When I get homesick, it’s usually in the fall when I miss the smells of a New England autumn – crisp air, piles of fallen leaves and apples. Food is our connection not only to the past, but to the cycles of nature. Harvest time is the traditional time to celebrate these connections and Middle Tennessee is chock full of fall festivals celebrating everything from banana pudding, and Southern fried food to fainting goats.
The fall issue of Local Table hits the streets this week, check us out in print and online, www.localtable.net.
