Harvest

Once a year, when the autumn turns cold, I make a pot of borscht, the Russian beet soup. This predates and outlives my time in Romania. If you say that word aloud, different spelling, Romanians have a specific soup that has nothing to do with beets. I am referring to beets. And cabbage, onion, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and a splash of wine vinegar—as many of them red as possible.

Last week our first cold snap coincided with the opening of sales at our local pumpkin patch. Creative young people in Marfa ran a Go Fund Me last spring to pay for the summer’s water to a community garden long dormant from various efforts. They intended to grow pumpkins for the community. Despite paying little attention to social media, I learned about it. And despite not fully understanding the concept, I gave money. A month ago when I revisited a good walking route around north Marfa, I came across the glory of hundreds of pumpkins of many varieties ripening on their vines. On Saturday, wrapped in down and wool, I attended the sale and came home with three—choosing two of them specifically for pie-making. I extend such kudos to the garden’s creators for creativity, community, doing the work.

I roasted the little one on Sunday with the plan of the first pie for me. Then dreams of hand pies with the larger one, a Porcelain Doll pumpkin—a real looker of a harvest victory. Before I went to bed, after the roasted flesh had cooled, collapsed in its shell, I snuck a taste. Oof, not good. Alas, I didn’t trust myself and thought surely with eggs and spice and sugar I will have a pie. And what a beauty of a pie it was, darker that usual with brown sugar and maple syrup, perfectly cracked in its all-butter crust. And it was horrible.

When I say horrible, I must go on a tangent about the cucurbita. This is the family of cultivated plants known as gourds, squash, and pumpkins. There are also wild species such as what I have variously known as coyote gourd, coyote melon, buffalo gourd—depending on where in the arid southwest I have lived. That is to say, these cute baseball-sized orbs are fairly common and known to be eaten by wildlife. They are, by reputation, quite bitter to the human palate.

Some years ago when I supplemented my income by giving tours at the Chinati Foundation, visitors asked about the lush green plant growing in the midst of the brown grass. Buffalo gourd, I said. Eaten by wildlife, bitter to humans. What does it look like inside? So not being in a protected park area, I picked one and cracked it open on a cement step. Then I earned all my pay and the delight of my group by touching a finger to the flesh and then to my tongue. Oh my.

When I say my pie was horrible, I do not mean the bright green, eye watering sharp of the buffalo gourd. I mean a darker acridity, mired in metallic black mud. I mean a taste in my mouth yet, after 24 hours and multiple teeth-brushings and strongly flavored food and drinks.

I mean that whole beautiful pie went in the trash.

I began anew today with the Porcelain Doll.

October is the best month in Marfa. We spend many days and nights with doors and windows open. My perennials are having a fantastic last hurrah: lantana, salvia, yellow bells, gramas sideoat and blue. Cottonwoods are starting to yellow, which seems late but we’ve had rain. Monarchs flit through by the dozens. We are awake from the summer torpor. I am walking, and reading, and catching up on correspondence. Scouring our stores for a bag of rye flour to make a bread worthy of my borscht. Reminded of my favorite Loren Eiseley poem about welcoming autumn with its promise of seeds. And enjoying the harvest in almost all of its forms.