Deep Gleaning

Every other morning lately, I'm out in the front yard, harvesting okra.  

I've grown far more of it than I need, with just about twenty plants chugging away.  Ten of those are packed over-dense into a four by eight bed, so their production has been less per plant.  This is only my second season growing, so I'm still figuring the whole thing out.  The tallest of them now stand well over five feet, and lately I get about a quart a day from the lot of 'em.  

I don't need anywhere near that much, and there's only so much bhindi masala, gumbo, and batter-fried okra folks in my household want to eat.  I've already selected the healthiest plants to let run to seed stock for next year, so the question becomes: what to do with the rest?

Giving those pods to neighbors?  That's a bit of a stretch in the suburban Mid-Atlantic, where okra mostly has a reputation for slime.  This is, of course, utterly unfair.  Okra's delicious when prepared properly, nutty and nutritious, with a satisfyingly toothsome texture.  But still, folks seem confused and unfairly repulsed by it.

In most of the rest of the world, that's not the case.  In the traditionally warmer regions of the planet, where most of humankind dwells, it's a staple crop.  Easy to grow and productive, it's highly desired, even in its spinier forms.

Out in front of my little church, there's that Little Free Pantry, one that we started to supplement the traditional food bank in town.  Folks get hungry in the off-hours, after all.  It's taken off in ways we didn't anticipate.  In the last six months, with the support of the church and our friends in the community, twenty seven thousand pounds of food have been funneled through a cheery little bird-feederesque box.  We've set out coolers, too, and...notably...built a Little Free Produce Stand.

Because Poolesville Presbyterian sits in the heart of an agricultural reserve, there are plenty of folks who garden, and from their efforts produce an overabundance.  There are, similarly, many who have more resources than they actually need for their well-being.  When gardens produce more than we need, it shouldn't ever go to waste.

When there's an overabundance, the great sacred narrative of the Bible is real clear about how we are to use it.  More than you need?  Torah sez: don't squeeze every last drop out of the land.  We are called instead to be sure to set a portion of our efforts aside for those who have need.  From Leviticus 19, we hear:

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.  

From Deuteronomy 24, we hear:  

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow.

And as the Law was woven by storytellers into narrative form, that becomes part of the defining mythopoetics of a culture.  The Book of Ruth recounts how Ruth the Moabite and her mother Naomi...a foreigner and a widow, respectively...gleaned from the fields of the honorable Boaz.  And Ruth and Boaz getting to know one another better was, as the story goes, how the lineage of King David.  Without the ethic of leaving something for those who have need, there is no Israel.  There is no messianic understanding.  It's kinda sorta important.

And in our grasping, Mammonist age, we've forgotten this.  We're encouraged to anxiously optimize, until everything we have is turned inwards, our energies like those of a collapsing star, hoarding light as it folds upon itself.

If my efforts serve me alone, if I maximize my profit at every turn and seek my own advantage without exception, then I have become an affront to the justice of God's covenant.  That's a sustained and basic moral imperative, if you understand the Bible as an authoritative text in your life.

That said, there's not a whit to stop you from doing more.  Gleaning can go deeper.  If you expand your plantings, you can do so with the explicit intent of feeding those who hunger.

And so I knew, when I planted all that okra, that I'd have my fill, and that come harvest time, I'd be bringing bag after bag of tasty nutritious pods to the produce stand.

They're gone within the half-hour, picked up by women driving cleaning service vehicles, or men driving pickups filled with lawn equipment.

And every morning, when I snip those pods, I recall that if I expect any blessing upon the work of my hands, I need to be that blessing.

Blueberries and Catbirds

As the first wave of summer heat spools up, my little garden is almost ready for the second wave of harvest.

Asparagus is the tip of the spear, rising when spring first whispers at warmth.  Those delectable first fern shoots are now long gone, allowed to grow to their natural man-height, a riot of delicate whiskers and poisonous berries.

This week, I'll be gently digging out my overwintered garlic.  Their great-great-grandmother bulbs were Trader Joes organics, which I bought five years ago to plant rather than eat.  They're an indeterminate softneck variety, which I plant copiously in early fall.  Last year I got 25 bulbs, and as I'm of the "triple the garlic" persuasion in any recipe, they go to good use.  This year, I'm hoping for thirty out of two four-by-eight beds.  It's the most I've ever grown, and I may even try intercropping this year, as Nosferatu's Bane seems to ward off early season deer depredations. 

While the garlic hangs dangling in the shade of our carport to cure, I'm also turning my attention to the blueberry bushes in front of my house.  They're a twelve year old planting, and at this point every year they're fat with bunches of ripening blueberries.  Hundreds of berries hang heavy on the bush, and as they blush green to pink to lavender, I'm always convinced we'll maybe this year have enough for a pie.

Until the grey catbirds arrive, that is.  Unlike the local mockers that have taken up regular residence in one of our boxwoods, catbirds aren't seen much around my garden most of the year.  But when the blueberries arrive, it's a catbird feeding frenzy.

Now, I don't mind sharing.  Setting aside something for our avian friends is a fine Mary Poppins thing to do.  For a few years, I'd tried putting "bird netting" over the bushes.  But "bird netting" required building a frame, without which the mockingbirds and catbirds just ate the berries right through the mesh.  Then I tried putting small fine mesh bags around individual bunches of berries, leaving others for the birds.  This worked for one half of one season.

But unlike our fractious, combative, disposable sparrows, who'll also feast upon the berries but were clueless about how to circumvent the bags, catbirds aren't morons.  Like their mockingbird cousins, they're inquisitive and adaptable creatures, and they quickly figured out how to pull those mesh bags off. 

For the last few years, I've gotten no more than a couple of handfuls of berries, and the catbirds have feasted.

So this year, I tried a new tack.  I covered three quarters of my plants with some drawstring fine mesh bags large enough for me to stand in.   But not all, never all.  

Do not harvest to the edge of your fields, as the Law puts it, and that applies to humans and catbirds alike.   That, I thought, will surely do it.  They'll go for the easy pickings, and we'll be copacetic.

After putting the nets on, the very first thing that happened?  

I netted a catbird.  Glancing up from my laptop "office" by the kitchen window, I saw a wild fluttering of grey wings inside the netting.  Rather than eating some of the dozens of ripening berries I'd left easily available, it set hungry eyes on the portion I'd set aside for myself.

The net being fine mesh, the persistent little critter wasn't tangled up at all.  It had just figured out a way to nose through the inadequately tightened drawstring opening, at which point it realized that getting out was going to be a little more challenging.  It flapped around in a panic, the berries forgotten.

I wandered out, and after opening up the netting, with some encouragement got it to fly away, meowing anxiously.

Don't get greedy, little birds.  Don't get greedy.