Hunting and Gathering

A special autumn issue

The Saturday News Digest, E1/V26

• Off to the Farms

• A Stew Map of the Country

• An Introduction to the Wonders of Staten Island

• And Now, a Treat!

Off to the Farms
The timely usefulness of children

One of the practicalities of having access to a child at this time of year is the excuse they provide to spend a day picking apples. Nothing is as enjoyable as wandering through orchards heavy with fruit with the sole purpose of filling up a bushel basket of apples. Sometimes the orchard is attached to a pumpkin field to trip over in pursuit of the just-right huge orange lump. Generally, there’s a stand hawking apple cider and, if you time it right and know the local laws, there may also be harvest beer and hard cider. These spots are usually farther out into the country and that’s okay because experience has taught that a child will mercifully fall asleep on long car rides.

Of course, many adults do all this on their own. But experience, too, bears out that adults, so centered on their own tiny worlds of work and sad nonsense, forget the simple pleasure of being outdoors on an autumn day when the sunlight seems to filter through stained glass. Nor do they remember the delights of cluttering their kitchens with pots, pans, and flour in the service of pies and cakes. A few even venture to fantasize about the possibility of canning and preserving for the long dark months ahead.

At the moment we don’t know any available children, but we’re going out this weekend anyway. It’s the only remedy we can think of to relieve a household of stress and a husband who chomps through bowls of apples with abandon. It’s just about the most sane way to spend this first October weekend.

A Stew Map of the Country
Parsing the geography of Brunswick stew, booya, and burgoo

Brunswick stew, booya, and burgoo are historically important American dishes, forged by necessity with the ongoing input of many cooks of different native backgrounds.

Consider their plight: If you found yourself plunked down in a foreign land, hungry and with little but a pot and a rifle, your only resort would be to go out and shoot a smallish creature (bigger game required a time-consuming process your hunger would not abide). You’d cart it home, where someone would be in charge of building a fire while you dress the poor animal and throw the pieces into your pot along with some foraged greens and water. Once judged cooked, you and your companions—friends or strangers—would feel blessed to fill your bellies with your collective labors.

Brunswick stew, booya, and burgoo continue today to be whipped up for crowds, mainly for community celebrations and fundraising events. Often they are tied to contests where many traveling cooks lug their pots from from county to county. Ambitious ones venture across state lines for fierce competitions.

My favorite Brunswick stew cook, Randy Bush, stirring up a batch for a church fundraiser in Mechanicville, VA.

October is about mid-season for experiencing a good Brunswick stew, booya, or burgoo event. It’s short notice, but the next two weeks happen to be packed. Start with the stew in Virginia (see note below), then head west to Illinois for burgoo and finish up with booya in Minnesota. A stomach-saving tip from someone who completed the circuit a couple of years ago is to bring an ice chest and some large takeout soup-size plastic containers. This will allow you to indulge in a reasonable amount at each stop, and the competitors are happy to fill your containers to carry home with you, especially if you ask them near the end of the events.

Note: Georgia squabbles with Virginia over who invented Brunswick stew. Really, who cares so long as both states keep cooking it—the recipes are virtually the same. Anyway, Georgia holds competitions later in the year. Golden Isles has a very good January festival to keep your eye on.

An Introduction to the Wonders of Staten Island
The last rural land in New York City.

Staten Island is a well-known outlier in New York City, dissed far and wide for the perception of it being low-rent, home to thugs, Mafia figures, reality TV stars, and the Wu-Tang Clan. Its ticky-tacky row homes, huge malls, junkyards, and that famous landfill (now a park) are sited as further evidence. Top it off with the borough having a long history of being politically out of step with the predominant liberal bent of the rest of the city. Even during the Revolutionary War, it mostly sided with the British.

Much of this is true, but it gravely overlooks the fact that much of Staten Island retains many vestiges of early Dutch and colonial rural countryside. More houses and buildings from these eras remain in the borough than anywhere else in the city, with small family graveyards tucked beside old roads.

A resident of the tiny Sleight family graveyard.

Staten Island is home to the Decker Farm, the oldest working farm that remained in the same family until they deeded it to the Staten Island Historical Society. The 11 acres are still planted each year by Society volunteers. On the far end of the island there is the Snug Harbor Heritage Farm that serves as a source of fresh produce and as an agricultural resource to the community. For the adventurous and limbered, a crawl under a fence and walk through tangled overgrown forest leads to the ruins of the Farm Colony, a poorhouse for the city’s residents—many of whom were elderly or widows and children who couldn’t support themselves. The colony was a self-sustaining farm for the colony and a food source for other city institutions until it closed in 1975.

Certain people in need of the kind of solitude only pastoral vistas afford will drive or take the ferry over to Staten Island to spend the day doing nothing but wandering around. Joseph Mitchell captured the allure of the island in his famous essay Mr. Hunter’s Grave. He is a legendary writer of some of the best nonfiction stories written in the 20th century. If you don’t know his work, Mr. Hunter is a perfect introduction.

Pumpkin-picking season opens this weekend at Decker Farm and extends through to the end of the month. The Heritage Farm’s website offers some fine vegetable-based recipes.

And Now, a Treat!
Watermelon Times

Ellen Ficklen the premier curator of the largest collection for all things watermelon in the world, reached out to me a couple of weeks ago. She was interested in what I’ve written about watermelon and, as regular readers of America Eats! know, I’ve written a lot about it. We had a nice talk, and I ended up subscribing to her newsletter, Watermelon Times, not only because, as I keep saying, I love watermelon, but because her newsletter is informative and lively. Ficklen is also great company.

Find out for yourself by heading over to the Times. Even if you’re not crazy for what she calls fregetable—her solution to the controversy of whether watermelon is a fruit or a vegetable—you’ll discover some interesting articles and a lot of laughs.

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I hope this little autumn issue inspires you to get out there and enjoy the season! Farms, greenmarkets, and local fruit and vegetable stands have a bounty ready for you!