Walking the Berkshires

Pine Nut Shortage Threatens Pesto Production

This is the time of year when I consider that my opportunities to harvest my basil plants are fast dwindling with the likely onset of frost.  I pull the great, woody stems and bushy green foliage up by the roots and proceed to the plucking and pureeing stages of putting by pesto for the winter.  There is nothing quite as satisfying as several quarts of the stuff ready to enliven a bleak midwinter.  All you need are olive oil, basil leaves, hard cheese, and pine nuts.  But this year, pine nuts are very hard to come by.

I first became away of a pine nut shortage when there were none to be had in the bulk food section of the local co-op and specialty markets.  When the major chain stores stopped carrying them either, or had tiny 2 ounce bottles for $8, I realized something was dreadfully wrong. A friend who runs a wonderful liquor store and deli in Great Barrington was only able to purchase pine nuts wholesale if he bought 20 pounds (at $26/pound instead of $18).  He set aside a pound for us, but in the meantime, I have been forced to use walnuts, or experiment with hazelnuts, in my pesto sauce.

What is going on?  It turns out that virtually all the world's pine nut production, along with so many other labor intensive activities, is concentrated in China.  Pignoliphiles bemoan the "second-rate taste" of these nuts over those from the Mediterranean, and there is even a phenomenon called pine mouth attributed to tainted Chinese pine nuts that may be suppressing demand from a market that constitutes 90% of the  pine nut imports to the US.  

At the moment not even the off-putting Chinese sort is making it to our market shelves in any great numbers.  Meanwhile the European varieties have doubled in price, due perhaps to the strength of the Euro, or maybe to something environmentally out of balance that is affecting the wild pines.  A crop failure?  Unsustainable forestry practices in Russia and the Far East?  Increased demand and poor production? Some kind of recall of tainted nuts from China?  Climate change?  Rumors abound.

The Chicago Tribute identifies the main causes as follows:

The reasons are several — poor crops, increased demand and the ever-popular climate change. And prospects for a turnaround aren't good.

The domestic version of pine nuts comes from the West and Southwest, produced by the pinyon pine. The vast majority of pine nuts, though, are imported from China. There have been problems in both locations.

"(China) had a pretty terrible crop last year," said David Braverman, one of the owners of nutsonline.com, a New Jersey business that has been dealing in nuts since 1929. "They lost a significant amount of the crop. And in addition, the demand in China was higher than it has ever been. So they cut their exports. A poor crop coupled with the high demand, and there was very little to go around."

The problem in the U.S. can be blamed on climate change, according to Dayer LeBaron, the CEO of wholesalepinenuts.com, a Utah-based family business that has been harvesting pine nuts since the late '50s.

...The result, LeBaron said, is that prices of domestically produced pine nuts have increased 200 percent in the last five years; imported nut prices have jumped between 800 and 1,000 percent....

In any case, there is more going on with pine nuts than just a paucity of perfect pesto.  And I am going to have to learn to love it without them.

The Self Inflicted Wound

A dear friend wrote to me recently about the anguish she felt over the oil that continues to inundate the heart of the sea.  She is a brilliant poet, and one who looks squarely at the horrors of the body and soul, but she also is a person of action and feels helpless in the face of this heartsickness.  She is a writer, as am I, so this is what I wrote in reply.

"Sometimes it takes a self inflicted wound to halt the bleeding.  I think of those "relief wells" inching their way through the seabed, and it almost feels like using a lancet to release bad humors in those days when western medicine and modern science knew little of each other.  Black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood.  The body out of balance. 

We are shockingly primitive in our modern response to what our greedy delving has released.  It is like Tolkein's Balrog of Moria that awoke when the dwarves went too deep after their mithril.  It took Gandalf's death and rebirth to quench its flame.  It will require something like that of us as well.

Tolkien the lover of Trees also understood the sadness of the elves who outlived all else that they loved, who knew the ancient oaks from acorns and saw whole forests heedlessly destroyed to satisfy the consumptive now.  The Scouring of the Shire is for me the most important part of the Lord of the Rings.

The more we look unflinchingly at the horror of this house of grimy cards, the more we insist never again, the better chance we have that some positive lessons can be learned.  As for the wounded sea, the irreplaceable losses and the long term scars, sometimes the best we can do is bear witness, to tell their stories, to feel and to weep and to give tongue to grief.  The real healing happens over spans of time beyond human years, although it is amazing what resilience is possible from decade to decade. 

Consider the dramatic change in status of so many birds, including Brown pelicans, threatened with extinction by DDT and now recovering in its absence.  The harp seals that now haul out on the beach at Windrock when before the Marine Mammal Protection Act they were heedlessly slaughtered.  The quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink which when you were growing up was fouled and disregarded. 

We cannot sit by and say in a thousand years the earth will cleanse itself of the outrages we inflict on it.  There is a small comfort in knowing that geologic time is measured in millions while we encompass decades, but we only learn through telling and bearing witness, and a poet with your heart and depth of love for the ocean is the right person at the right time to give expression and meaning to this self inflicted wound."

Windrock Morning

I arrived at midnight and awoke to birdsong.  My visit is so brief that I did not even tell family I would be sleeping here, and so I do not know who is in the Little House with the blue pickup truck and the car with Maryland plates,  I suspect it is family because both the driveway gate and the Big House door were unlocked, and hope they are not too surprised by my car outside when they rise.

I am here in this way because I had a late night work meeting in CT and an early morning non-work meeting here with Mass Audubon, which with its conservation partners has conserved a substantial piece of land adjacent to our own and is anticipating several more conservation easements from our neighbors in what we call the Great Neck Conservation Partnership.  As we placed the Conservation Restriction on Windrock in December 2008, we put in the first link of a recreational trail on our land and I am meeting to help Audubon integrate it with the trail and parking area they are planning for the surrounding lands.  Then I have to be back in CT before 4:00 p.m. to get sworn in as an alternate on my Town P&Z and attend a meeting at 7:00.  Long day.

It is another cool, overcast day and everything is Summer green.  I slept on a couch in the living room and so am writing this while looking out the picture windows at the gray waters of the bay and a tug and barge moving through the west entrance of the Cape Cod Canal.  I will walk to the bluff in a little while and gaze out over the view that centers my soul, breathe in that cold, briny air and the scent of wildflowers, and feel the tensions of a busy week and complicated life drain away.  And I look ahead to the next visit, alone or with those I love, and I know they need this place as I do, even if they have not yet had the opportunity to know it in person.  It is a warm embrace, and always has been, and I know I will not shiver in the cool morning air unless with joy.

Nature's Notebook Catch Up

It's been a while since I posted links to my biweekly Nature's Notebook column in the Lakeville Journal (readable in the opinion section here with free registration.  A fair use excerpt from today's article:

"One must stay curious and alert to the progression of “firsts” in spring.  Let your mind wander to worldly cares, and the morels come and go by the wayside.

Not only species but individuals have their own timetables in spring. One gravid snapping turtle may heave up out of the swamp and make her ponderous way across the road in search of the right spot for her nest, while another hesitates. One Jack-in-the-pulpit in my garden emerges and blooms several weeks before another not 3 feet distant under nearly identical growing conditions...

...My wildflower beds are gaining complexity and character like fine wine as they mature. I like my wildflowers feral, volunteering in new spaces and growing amid and around each other as they will. I delight when the bluebells disappear from one spot and reappear somewhere else. I scatter seed and deliberate before dividing. I find blue-eyed grass where none had been before. I expect and combat this tendency in weeds, but celebrate it in wildflowers...

...A new garden is all about patience and expectancy, in a time of no blight and no drought and months to go before the tomatoes are fat on the vine. The growing season may last through September, or finish with a hard frost soon after Labor Day.

We have what the moment offers, when it is ready, when we are ready."

Sylvan and Scholarly Settings

I managed to visit three colleges last weekend while at my Haverford reunion, including side trips to Bryn Mawr and Swat.  All three are blessed with gorgeous buildings and stunning trees.  Haverford and Swarthmore in particular are renowned for their arborita.  I was always aware while an undergraduate at the 'Ford that we had a glorious campus with huge stately trees, but only now that I am a conservation professional do I have a full appreciation of what it means to see a Mossy Cup oak that is nearly seven feet in diameter at breast height, or a descendant of the Penn Treaty Elm that was planted in the 1860s and has a nearly complete perimeter of branches that sweep the ground.

Haverford also has its quirky statuary.   I am fondest of the marble gargoyle climbing structure carved during the Spring of 1990 by Haverford students under the instruction of fellow Alum Peter Rockwell.

 

 

"Cannon To the Left of Them, Cannon in Front..."

The quest for revolutionary war Salisbury Cannon took me to the waters of the Brandywine and the fields of Valley Forge last weekend.  At the former I found nothing beside three European gun barrels inside the sadly depleted museum - a victim of state budget cuts- though I did find my way to the "Plowed Hill" where my Ogden and Dayton ancestors held the line in Stirling's Division against the British and Hessian onslaught.  However on Sunday a friend and I struck gold, or rather what was occasionally gold painted iron, at Valley Forge.

I made an effort to slip loose the surely bonds of gender and ask for directions at the visitor center, only to be informed by the official I had selected that there were no American made revolutionary cannon at the National Historical Park, nor yet any cannon at all for that matter.  My companion commented that had I selected one of the young, buzzcut rangers instead of the sedentary fellow at the tourist information desk, I might have gotten a different response - gender fail - but as it turned out we needn't have been discouraged because the place is swimming in artillery of a decidedly locally made character.

We came upon the 3 gun battery in the picture above at a redan near where Conway's Division encamped  in the winter of 1777-1778, and determined that they were of two different calibers (4 or 6 pounders, perhaps) and at least one was a wooden replica (at right), which I believe rules it out as a Salisbury survivor.  We ate our lunch and as we wove our way along one way roads through he part on various genealogical errands as well as on the look out for more guns we found many more iron cannon, ranging from light artillery to siege guns and mortars.

I wanted to pay a visit to the Washington Memorial Chapel, when my ancestor Thaddeus Thompson was said to have had a memorial tablet placed by his daughter Rhoda, one of the last real daughters of the Revolution still alive near the end of the 19th century.  We asked after it at the gift shop, and while the volunteers there were initially uncertain whether we would find anything, I was able to say I thought it would be in the chapel itself and sure enough, it was one of just two large brass plaques in gothic script on either wall and had been polished by our guide without her really knowing its history!  Old Thaddeus was just one of thousands of men who endured that winter, and was later wounded in the trenches at Yorktown and one of the first veterans to receive a pension for his injuries after the war.  Whatever pull his daughter Rhoda had as one of the last tangible links to that era got him his solitary plaque on the church wall.

At the site of Knox's artillery park were a number of 4-9 pounders arranged on their gun carriages and painted a flat yellow in imitation of bronze although they all were of iron.  I am analyzing my images to see whether there are any patterns which will help us determine which batches may have come from the same foundry.  I found few distinguishing marks, though one large cannon by the Chapel had what looked like 20 C engraved just before the vent.

We also came upon a monument to Maxwell's New Jersey Brigade, with my ancestors Matthias Ogden in command of the 1st and Elias Dayton in charge of the 3rd NJ regiments.  The bronze soldier atop the pedestal is wrapped in a blanket and seems to be wearing woolen stockings.

The enemy never attacked Valley Forge, which is today besieged by an invasive sea of microstegium and excessive herbivory by white tailed deer but is treasured as open space by joggers and sunbathers.  I had an absolutely delightful time, even if the answer "Yes, we have no artillery" proved unfounded.

Anticipation

The heat was thick in the air yesterday as I worked on my gardens, spading up great clods of earth to lay down a brick path to the back gate and pulling out a carpet of weeds in advance of tilling the soil. Today the rain is pelting down in sheets with a following wind. Without standing water it was a mercifully mosquito-free experience to be outside working the earth, and hopefully this rain will soak well in.

I am dreaming of heirloom tomatoes and how to baffle blights, wilts and cankers before I get the harvest in.  I imagine basil by the bushel and pole beans and peppers.  I'm thinking about where to get a load of composted manure that won't be filled with garlic mustard seeds, and how to reclaim the wildflower beds from the encroaching suckers of choke cherry.  I would gladly stay home for a week on my hands and knees with nothing but garden projects before me, but will settle for an hour here and an afternoon there between now and planting time, a few short weeks away.

Screaming Tree

This is not a mangrove.  These buttressing root flairs do not perch above some inundated morass.  This woebegone maple grows by the roadside between Kent and New Milford, CT and is either the worst example of arboreal malpractice or evidence of biological tenacity in the face of overwhelming bad luck.

I believe it is most likely that a maple seed pinwheeled to rest on a big pile of leaves or wood chips that decomposed out from under its thirsty roots.  This may have taken a while, for an extensive root network now extends out from the tree from at least a yard above ground level.  When I stopped to take these pictures, I could see the face of a white tailed deer in the underbrush beyond the tree looking back at me through the aerial roots.

The other side of the tree is a horror show of a different sort.

Damage like that was probably caused by a front end loader pushing piles of debris around (perhaps the vanished pile of wood chips.  While evidence of appalling indifference and neglect, the fact that this tree has grown to this size, and continues to grow despite such insults, is truly astonishing.  It makes me wonder whether it is a sugar maple or a Norway (an invasive species known for its ability to take root in sidewalk cracks).  I will have to check next time I am in the neighborhood.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Take a walk outside.  Whatever you see, whatever is growing or blocking your view, can be described as the confluence of three factors: geology, climate, disturbance.

The slope and aspect of terrain, the overburdon of surficial material and composition of bedrock determine habitat and influence growing conditions.  The bedrock geology of Connecticut records the collision of continents and a central rift valley where dinosaurs roamed.  Differences in soil and groundwater chemistry allow calcareous fens to develop in one place, acidic bogs in another. 

There is a close correlation between our remaining farm fields and soils considered prime for agriculture.  There are geological reasons why the landcover in my town of North Canaan is more than 5% mines.

Climate determines vegetative cover, the presence of ephemeral and perennial water bodies, and the seasonal range of variation in air and water temperatures.  It affects the frequency and intensity of weather and the natural disturbance it causes.  Terrain influences climate at the local level, as well as prevailing winds and precipitation.  Hemlocks grow in cool ravines and on shaded north facing slopes, while acidic ridgetops feature scrubby bear oak and pitch pines. 

In my part of Connecticut, the dominant forest cover types transition from central to northern hardwoods, and certain plant and animal species - including red spruce and bog turtles - occur at either the northern or southern extents of their contiguous ranges.  Prolonged climate shifts beyond the range of variation will determine the composition and structure of habitats and whether these species expand or contract their populations.  This year we lacked the proper freeze /thaw conditions to promote maple sap to run for more than a few days.  If this becomes the norm, I will have to put my spiles away and order my syrup from Canada.

Disturbance can be natural or of human origin, and quite often is expressed as the influence of both factors.  Wind-throw, beaver impoundments, wild fire, ice storms and herbivory by white-tailed deer impact patterns of natural succession and select for some species over others. 

Even natural disturbance can be amplified by human activity - introduced forest pests and pathogens, fire suppression in fire dependent communities and overbrowse by deer expanding into the edge habitat provided by development are just a few examples.  Habitat destruction and fragmentation, followed by competition with introduced invasive species, are the dominant factors in the loss of species diversity and ecological disturbance.

The forests of southern New England are second or third growth woodlands, reflecting nearly 400 years of land use history since European settlement.  Even the lands we set aside from development grow and support life today in ways that are different from the virgin forests of 1619 (and even these were managed by native American land use practices).  We are part of these systems, as much as the rock beneath our feet and the rain that covers the land.

Housecleaning and Yardwork

I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the kitchen floor this weekend.  I scoured the dimpled linoleum to its true color that I have never liked but which is nonetheless clean.  The bleach made my hands red and caused the tiny cuts I was not aware I had to sting, but it felt really good when I was finished.

I set up the hammock and the tire swing in the backyard maple, its miserly offering of sap this season all forgiven.  I am raking dry grass and seed pods this afternoon toward a small fire on the old concrete slab at the back of the property that was once the floor of a carriage house.  Yesterday I cooked my Easter Dinner over such a fire in cast iron pots brought home from Africa and unused since.  Anticipate a post on how to bake onion beer bread in a number 3 potjie as soon as I have the chance to upload the photographs.

It is another glorious day, alone with time that is all mine.  The cast iron wind chime my sister gave us as a wedding present is clanging like the bell buoys of Maine in this light breeze.  I see that all the ornamental trees in the neighborhood are bursting to bloom, even as the wild apples in the field beyond the garden gate have yet to flower.  This is wise of the apples, for a cold rain may wash away the pollen and ruin the crop.

I am walking around barefoot on ground that has only just thawed.  I feel it give way beneath the pressure of my feet, yet rebound without recording the impression of my passage.  I notice the ephemeral wildflowers in my shade garden are mostly above ground, now, with trillium leaves unfurling even now and blood root not far behind.  There are the tips of yellow lady slippers, and jack-in-the-pulpit, and giant Solomon's seal.  Welcome back, my friends.  I will clear away the dross of winter to give you space to breathe.

I smell the woodsmoke and the crackle of dry grass from the little fire and it reminds me of fire lines I have tended in prescribed burns.  An old friend and lover who reads this blog once wrote the line "What is love but a leaf pile burning", but I think it is also a drip torch, the old tool of my trade as sometimes squad leader of an ignition crew dragging fire through the cat brier and bluestem on the Cape and Islands. Equal parts gas and diesel, and from this, well applied, the renewal of pine forest and sandplain grasslands and the rarities they contain.  Love is stepping back into the black when the flame blows back, using fire to direct fire, and unaware of how the smoke permeates clothes, hair and skin until out of the fire and back in polite company.