Titles and Connections

I've spent the past week or two making connections via internet with a few farms and farmers across the eastern side of the United States and I've had some fantastic success. Nearly all of them are excited to have me visit later this year and to observe and taste their beautiful fruits. The thing with antiquated varieties is that people who grow them do so out of passion and love for them. You wouldn't grow an outdated variety unless it really meant something to you either as an individual variety, or as part of the preservation of old varieties as a whole.

So now that fruit season is fast approaching us here in Michigan (and is already in full swing, elsewhere) I find myself thinking of ways to connect with farmers when talking to them face to face at markets and fruit stands. Being a fan of design, as well as all things small and cute, I've decided to make myself some business cards.

It took me a while to settle on a title for myself. I don't want to make it sound too intense, because I'm just not that kind of gal, so I settled on "Heirloom Fruit Enthusiast" because it speaks to exactly what I am, with just a dash of she's-just-crazy-enough-to-have-a-business-card-that-says-this-on-it.

I played with fonts and again wanted to go with a lighthearted aesthetic. I spent hours writing my name and drawing little fruits on pieces of scrap paper before I figured out what I wanted. I admit some of this is done with a pre-made font, but it was all free-use and it's not like I'm selling these.

Because I am a huge fan of matte paper and the two-sided business card, I decided to go with moo.com for printing. I've used them in the past and their customer service is fantastic, as are their rates and their products. The other thing moo.com offers is the ability to use up to 100 different images on the backs of my cards. Since I don't think I could ever choose just one, this is a serious bonus for me.

So, I leave you with a couple of the images I want to use:

The "History of the Strawberry" Talk (dun dun dunnnnnn!)

Well I survived giving my first ever talk on fruit history. Last year I was invited by a farmers market friend of mine to speak about the history of the strawberry at the May 2013 meeting of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor. What a delightful group of people! They were very engaging, asked several questions, and even helped me with my atrocious pronunciation of several French words. (Duchesne? Yikes.)

My talk was primarily on the history of the strawberry as a table fruit, starting around Pliny and ending with modern commercial strawberry farming. It was awesome to watch so many hands shoot up when I asked how many people remember the strawberries of their childhood being more flavorful and fragrant than the modern grocery story strawberries. It was honestly the entire room of 30-40 people.

I was approached by a number of people afterward for additional chatting. So many people had wonderful stories about the strawberries they remember of their childhood. One man told me about a variety of strawberry that his father grew when he was a boy in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that he hasn't been able to find since. A woman also shared that she is currently growing strawberries with some young adults at a local juvenile detention center. How cool!

With me I lugged six different varieties of strawberry plants to show and share with the group members so they could see just how tiny some of the earlier cultivated varieties were. I took with me a wild virginiana, a cultivated virginiana from monticello, a 17th century cultivated ananassa from France and a few others... People were fascinated by the fact that these plants have remained pretty much unchanged since the previous centuries (I admit, I too am still fascinated by the notion).

The whole experience helped me gain some confidence in myself when it comes to public speaking. I've struggled with speaking publicly for my entire life, and even with a subject that I am passionate about, I am a stuttering, stammering mess. Hah.

As I was walking to my car after the event had mostly cleared out, I was approached by two wonderful ladies who are also members of a Victorian history group here in Michigan. They both asked if I would be interested in doing a talk on Victorian farming and fruit at one of their meetings sometime. Without batting an eye I agreed, though I still have yet to set up the specifics. How exciting to find people who are passionate about similar subjects!

Poir-fect Pear: Williams' Bon Chrétien aka Bartlett

The Williams' pear is more commonly known in the states as the Bartlett, and is the most readily available of the varieties I've posted so far. Here in Michigan, the staples tend to be Bartlett, Bosc and D'Anjou pears, as far as commercial varieties go.

 

Unfortunately I am not a huge fan of the Williams' pear. When ripe, its flavor edges toward simple and almost flat, with powerful citrus notes coming from the skin that really dominate the senses. It certainly doesn't hold the subtleties that the other varieties I've written about do.

It's still a very old pear, which makes it worth writing about (at least on the blog), and is thought to have originated in the late 1760's in Aldermaston, England. I ended up making juice from some of these as well, but found the juice to be cloyingly sweet with little else to offer. I used it to mix with some strawberry juice and it worked really well as a sweetener and the inclusion of the pear skins kept the flavor really bright.

Poir-fect Pear: Forelle

For several years I have grown a speckled lettuce in my garden called "Forellenschluss". It's buttery and crisp and I've loved it since the first time I tried it, especially because of its intense name. Say it with me... for-EL-len-SCHLUSS. Whew.

Well, this entry isn't really about lettuce. It's about the Forelle pear. Did you know that "forelle" means "trout" in German? I certainly didn't! When I read that, it was like I could feel that chunk of information tangibly clunk into place in my brain. The lettuce... and the pear... are speckled... like a trout. Woah. 

I feel like Keanu Reeves, here... Wooaaah. 

Poir-fect Pear: Abate Fetel

Just look at these babies. Long and somewhat alien, with just enough russet for interest without enough to give you that matte texture on the skin that feels a little weird against your teeth (you know what I'm talking about, right?). They're fragrant, floral and intensely sweet. I made juice with some of the more ripe pears in my basket and sure enough it was like drinking pear-flavored honey. Amazing. 

The Abate Fetel is, from what I can tell, a late 19th century pear developed by a French monk (Abate = Abbot). The thing is, from preliminary internet research, I've found all sorts of conflicting information about its development! 

The only formally published information about it that I could find was that it was in a book from 1886, claiming it was a new cultivar available from France. I have found orchard and nursery sites claim it to be developed in 1866, and other sites that say it was bred by monks in the 16th century. How frustrating!

I'm beginning to wonder if the tree itself was developed by monks way-back-when, but it wasn't released as scions for commercial production until 1866... It certainly didn't make it over to the states until the 1880's though. It's now one of the top pears in Italy, which is additionally frustrating because when I use the internet to search for information all I get are Italian websites talking about modern fruit production and export. Boo.

Ah, the woes of researching antiquated fruit varieties... the fruits themselves are hard to find, but real, fact-based documentation of them is even worse! More often than not I find myself reading accounts from folks' great-great-great grandfathers who ran orchards and whatnot.

UPDATE: I finally was able to get my hands on a more recent book on the history of pears and have read now that the Abate Fetel is indeed a late 19th century pear. Thank goodness for books! The internet can be so full of misinformation.

Poir-fect Pear: Packham's Triumph

My mother just told me she thought my photograph was Poi-fect. I think she meant it to be like a Three Stooges thing... but to me (and my weary, pear-researching brain) it came off as a hilarious play on words, using the French word for pear - Poire. I'm not sure if this is an indication of my over-zealous nature, or my lame sense of humor...

Anyway, I began playing with photographing some of the few antique varieties that I have access to in this off season.

The first that I managed to find was the Packham's Triumph pear, a cultivar introduced in 1896 in New South Wales, Australia. I had to run back to the store to grab a couple more last night because the first ones that I had so very carefully picked from the shelf for their stems and leaves had been ravaged by a menacing store employee who, in her OCD rampage, shaved their remaining twigs from their tops as she bagged them. I was livid, in a sort of keep-it-to-yourself-you-don't-want-everybody-to-know-you're-actually-crazy sort of way...

When I went to pick up the new pears, I blurted my story to the guy ringing me up (who was actually in training, the poor chap) and when he and his supervisor made weak and very polite attempts to "connect" and seem interested, I heard myself begin to spout off the history of the Packham's pear to them and instantly knew I'd begun to edge toward crazy-pear-lady-status. I stopped, almost mid sentence, to spare them the bulk of my mania. My brother, who had been standing on, said later that he was proud of me for stopping myself... and something to the effect that he was sure I was going to be that guy's "First day at work, is everybody this crazy?" story.

When does a project go from "project" to "obsession"? Hmm... food for thought.

Having actually started accumulating fruit and taking photographs as got me so excited for this summer; you have no idea.

New Project: Old Fruit

So if you have followed me over at the Tanglewood Farm blog (A Pinch of Something Nice) you'll know that I have been slowly creeping toward the realization of this project for a long time. My passions have strayed towards the historical fruit for many years. From my historical strawberry plant collection to my life here living in an historical orchard to the fact that any time I see an old book on fruit I have to buy it, I have daydreamed of historical fruit since I learned that modern fruit was bred for anything other than the improvement of taste and texture.

You see, modern fruit (since the introduction of refrigeration, and coincidentally freezing, in the 1930's) had been bred to be durable, as well as tasty. Somewhere along the line government breeding stations shifted their primary focus from the fruit's actual palatability to it's shipability and it's storage life. The strawberries of today are very different from those that existed 150 years ago.

Now, I'll agree that the durability of a fruit is an important thing. Living in Michigan, I often find myself pining for fruits like figs and bananas, and obviously they have to travel a long way to get here. I even admit that I picked up several organic nectarines from California last week on a cloudy grumpy day and have been enjoying one a day ever since. (In fact, they have made me realize that if I had to choose one single fruit to enjoy for the rest of my life it would be nectarines. Mmm.)

Still, the promise of a difference in flavor an texture in the old varieties entice me to learn more.

So, I've begun to collect research, information and observation of pre 1930's fruit varieties. I'm not sure if I'll ever get anything published, or if I'll self publish, or if I'll just sit at home and clutch my notebooks and smile and rock back and forth while humming, but I do know that there is a growing interest in heirloom edibles and there is a very sorry lacking in heirloom fruit resources. I am a picky lady, and maybe that is why I have yet to find a book that fully satisfies me, but I suppose from that pickiness I hope to spawn a superior collection of information for the casual and more devoted reader.

So over the next few years I'll be gathering information, traveling and tasting, documenting and photographing, and I'm sure someone else will write and publish that special book that I'm looking for, right before I find myself feeling "finished" but that's okay. I'll try shopping it around to a few publishers once I get a clear plan in my head, but we'll just have to wait and see where this takes me.

I'm doing this for the journey, and primarily for myself. Of course, I want to share everything I learn and do for this book with you eventually, too, but this is mostly for me :)

So. Here is my quest for you, dear readers (I know you're not really there, but we'll pretend...)

Share with me your favorite pre-1939 fruits, and let me know when you spot heritage or heirloom fruits for sale. I'm going to be doing some traveling specifically for this project, so if you know of a place that grows fruits from the past, let me know! If you spot that perfect Doyenne Gris pear at your local market, shoot me a facebook message! I'm particularly interested in stone fruits and berries since they seem to be harder to find old varieties of.

I really need to know the cultivars and varieties when possible. A greengage plum could be anything from a modern cross to a 16th century original Reine Claude, so variety names are important to me. :)

You can follow the farm facebook page here. I'm really hoping to use that page to collect some heirloom sightings from readers, friends and families. If you're not sure if it's an heirloom, post it anyway and I'll do some research on it!