Examples of great bounty and luxury contribute much to the awakening of spring, along with the symphony of bird song and the fullness of green coming on after a long, cold and barren winter.
The apples, stored carefully under the bed, have long since been eaten. The very good ones to the kitchen, the blemished half-wizened ones to the barn for the horses, and the very soft ones, still a treat for the laying hens especially in the dead of winter, laid open by your heel on the henhouse floor. The precious jars of plums, jam and apple sauce are nearly finished too, by the time the mighty rhubarb pushes her way up into the warming air and sunshine of April.
While eating off your own land has its limits, those limits will expose the depths of appreciation within you for what there is, caring less and less about what there isn’t.
The anticipation of the first picking of rhubarb seems extra special when its arrival marks the first sighting of fresh fruit on your table since last fall.
As soon as the snow’s gone I’m out surveying my farm and my first destination is the rhubarb patch to see if there is any sign of life.
The bold and confident rhubarb does not disappoint, bursting forth earlier than anything else.
Over the next couple of weeks, I head to the rhubarb patch daily, just to marvel at the force of this plant and to plan the first picking. A few stalks for sauce arriving in time to use up the last of the maple crop loitering in the bottom of the milk can in the corner of the kitchen, too little to bother canning.
E.B. White writes, “it was from rhubarb that the gods got the idea for ambrosia.”
After a few batches of sauce, we’re onto pie. Folks I know who are indifferent to rhubarb, obviously never sat at my mother’s table in spring. Her pie never failed to win over all skeptics, 100% success.
Rhubarb has so many stellar attributes, its hard to know where to start to list them.
It’s the easiest plant there is to grow and needs little tending, beyond breaking off the seed stalks as they appear, an occasional dressing of compost, a drink of water during a dry spell, and an affectionate word now and again.
A generous producer, rhubarb grows like a jungle plant through May and June, generating far more fruit than any other plant, bush or tree. The stalks don’t need peeling as apples do, nor topping and tailing like those pesky little currants and gooseberries, and in less than five minutes of bending over, you’ve got an armful, more than enough for a pie.
Compare that with a stooping required to fill two-quart baskets of strawberries and there you have yet another reason to give thanks for the pie plant.
As far as I know, rhubarb is not susceptible to any insect or animal predations, nor any sort of plague for that matter.
There’s no doubt in my mind that rhubarb has played an important role in our survival here in New England. Perhaps we will learn once again to avail ourselves of her fruitfulness and come to prize her gifts, as shortages increase, and the transport of goods makes even less sense than it does now.