A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [70]
But the next afternoon, Farley brought over a basket of tomatoes and three dozen bell peppers, and Maggie sent an additional dozen eggplants. Someone from church asked if they had any corn, and when Cici answered in the negative, transferred two bushels of fresh-picked corn from the back of his truck to the back of her SUV. Their ruined garden, they quickly came to realize, had become the excuse for every woman in the county who couldn’t face canning another tomato or pickling another cucumber to dispose of the excess bounty from their own gardens—and to feel good about herself while she did it.
They made zucchini bread, zucchini casserole, fried, sauteed, and roasted zucchini. They made squash soup, tomato soup, onion soup, and enough marinara sauce to open an Italian restaurant. They chopped pears for chutney and simmered them into a sweet, thick sauce and ate them whole, with juices dripping down their wrists and chins, over the sink. Everything else was put on hold for a season that wouldn’t wait, and the abundance of nature’s harvest took over their lives.
They bought a second freezer and installed it in the cellar. They shaved corn off the cob and packed it into plastic pint containers, blanched green beans, lima beans, okra, and field peas and did the same. And of course they couldn’t ignore the bounty of their own fruit trees and bushes when they began to produce. Bridget added twenty-seven glistening jars of blackberry jam to the strawberry coulis in the pantry, and at least as many jars of cherry jelly, grape jelly, and applesauce. They wondered out loud just how long gardens could possibly continue to produce in this region, anyway.
Bridget glanced up from puzzling over the canning jar labels and stifled a groan as Cici set the basket of fruit on the counter between an overflowing basket of corn and a tall paper sack of unshelled butter beans, nudging aside two rows of fat, ripe tomatoes to make room.
“What is it?” Bridget asked.
“Persimmons, according to the note. The Baptist preacher’s wife thought we could use them. I don’t even know what a persimmon is.”
Bridget’s eyes went wide. “That’s weird.”
Cici gave a grunt of laughter as she edged the coffeepot out from between a tower of red peppers and yet another basket filled with corn. “Maybe to you. I gave up being surprised by what I find on our front porch about a month ago.”
“No, I mean, look.” Bridget waved the stack of canning jar labels at her. “I found these in the cookbook.”
Cici poured a cup of coffee and crossed the room to take the labels. They were made of heavy paper, cut with a decorative edge, and were without the adhesive back of modern jar labels. Each had a colorful, faded border of fruits entwined with vines and flowers, and in the center of each label was written in brush calligraphy “Blackwell Farms Persimmon Jelly.”
Cici raised an eyebrow as she returned the labels. “Cool. Now we know what you do with a persimmon.”
“These weren’t in this book yesterday,” Bridget insisted. “I know they weren’t because—”
“Get away from me with your muffins, your coffee cakes, and your French toast topped with jam.” Lindsay came through the door with her face averted and her two index fingers crossed before her as though to ward off evil. “One pair of jeans, I can believe the dryer shrunk. Two, maybe. But three? I don’t think so.”
She marched straight to the refrigerator, opened it, and peered in. “Isn’t there any fruit?”
“How about a persimmon?” suggested Cici.
“I don’t even know what a persimmon is.”
“Something else we have to peel, cook, and preserve,” said Cici.
“Great. That’s how my jeans got so tight in the first place.” Lindsay closed the refrigerator door and opened a cabinet. “Isn’t there anything to eat?”
Both Bridget’s and Cici’s eyes traced the cornucopia of produce the kitchen had become—tomatoes on every surface, baskets and bags spilling over with green and yellow vegetables, unshucked corn stacked on the counters and floor—but wisely said nothing. Lindsay