Food Preservation—1826, 1843, 1845, 1858, 1873, 1874—

#9

This is a firkin from the 1800s. Housewives used wooden containers like this to preserve  suet for making "fresh" puddings and pies the year round, as explained below.

—1826—

To Preserve Hams

Having tried several methods of preserving hams from the ravages of bugs and flies, and all having failed, I concluded to try the effect of pepper. I ground some black pepper fine and put it in a box, and as soon as the hams were well smoked, I took them down and dusted the pepper over the raw part, and over the back and hung them up in the smoke house again. This I have tried two seasons, and neither flies or bugs touch them. I am well satisfied in my own mind that it is a good remedy and deserves to be generally known. I was induced to try the experiment from the circumstances of knowing that ground pepper mixed with sweetened water and the yolk of an egg would kill flies.

[Thomas’s]

—1826—

To Preserve Suet

Suet may be preserved perfectly fresh and good for any length of time by the following method. Prepare and chop your suet fit to mix into puddings—pack it down in a stone jar or firkin—pour molasses till the whole is covered—let the vessel be closed to keep out the flies; and you have nothing to do but to dip out and drain the suet, if you do not wish to sweeten with molasses. By this simple method the sailor my enjoy a luxury in every climate; and the farmer who is fond of the article may have fresh suet for puddings or pies the year round.

[Thomas’s]

—1843—

To Keep Tomatoes Year Round

Take them full ripe, and scald in hot water, to facilitate the operation of taking off the skin; when skinned, boil well in a little sugar and salt, but no water, and then spread in cakes about an eighth of an inch thick, in the sun. They will dry enough in three or four days to pack away in bags, which should be hung in a dry room.

[Thomas’s]

—1843—

To Pickle Tomatoes

Pick them when they are ripe. Put them in layers in a jar, with garlics, mustard seed, horseradish, spices, &c., as you like, filling up the jar; occasionally putting a little fine salt, proportionally to the quantity laid down, and which is intended to preserve the tomato. When the jar is full, pour on the tomatoes cold cider vinegar (it must be pure,) till all is covered, and then cork up tight and set away for winter. 
[Thomas’s]

—1845—

Preservation of Apples

The following observations, contained in a letter from the late Noah Webster, LL. D. have formerly been published in the Massachusetts Agricultural Repository: “The best mode of preserving apples for spring use I have found to be, the putting of them in dry sand, and as soon as picked; for this purpose I dry sand in the heat of summer, and late in October put down the apples in layers, with a covering of sand upon each layer. The singular advantages of this mode of treatment are these: 1. The sand keeps the apples from the air, which is essential to their preservation. 2. The sand checks the evaporation of the apples, thus preserving their full flavor; at the same time any moisture yielded by the apples, (and some there will be,) is absorbed by the sand, so that the apples are kept dry, and all mustiness is prevented. My pippins in May and June are as fresh as when first picked; even the ends of the stem look as if just separated from the twig.”

[Maine]
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Long before there was Tupperware, stoneware crocks like this one, made in Bennington, Vermont, circa 1855, were used by rural families to store food, as discussed in the next excerpt.

—1858—
To Preserve Hams

Slice and trim ready for cooking; pack in a stone jar, alternating a layer of ham and lard; cover tight, and it will keep perfectly good for a year. 
[Leavitt’s]

—1858—
Preserving Fruits & Vegetables

While the farmer himself is slicking up out of doors, the farmer’s wife, within, should be making some slick things for winter. With the self-sealing cans, of varied type and patent, no good housekeeper has an excuse for not laying in a good supply of those fruits and vegetables which in summer and autumn grace the table. They keep perfectly in these cans, and some of them can hardly be distinguished from the fresh-picked articles. Green corn, tomatoes, peaches, berries, plums, and other perishable fruits, not only add greatly to the delicacies of the farmer’s table in the winter, but they promote health. Nothing can be a more agreeable change from the inevitable salt junk and potatoes than these preserved fruits and vegetables. Lay in a good stock of them. 

[Leavitt’s]

—1873—

A Good Way to Preserve Eggs

The most convenient and satisfactory way to keep eggs fresh that we have ever tried is to punch numerous holes in a small tin pail, fill it with fresh eggs, lower the pail with the eggs into a kettle of melted tallow, which is as hot as it can be without burning one’s finger when thrust into the liquid; then lift the pail out quickly, and the melted tallow will flow out, leaving a thin coating over every egg. Let the eggs be removed as soon as possible from the pail, and be placed on the ends in a keg or barrel, which should be kept in a cool cellar until the eggs are wanted for use. We have kept eggs in this manner more than six months so fresh that expert judges supposed they were fresh. As the eggs are so much colder than the tallow, a thin melted pellicle of cold tallow formed almost instantly, which may render the shell impervious to air.

[Leavitt’s]

—1874—

To Make Butter Cool in Hot Weather

Set it on a bit of brick, cover with a flower-pot, and wrap a wet cloth around the pot. The evaporation cools it as well as ice.

[Thomas’s]

This six-gallon crock, made around 1865 in Bennington, Vermont sold for $90,000 in a 2007 auction. I wonder if a Tupperware bowl will sell for that kind of money to collectors 142 years after it was made? Not likely. The crock was crafted by humans, but Tupperware is spit out by a machine. Big difference.

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How many of us today would feel safe eating ham that had been "larded" in a crock for a few months? Or suet pudding from suet stored in a firkin in like manner? Without refrigeration, that's what people did. Lard, suet and tallow are all fats that were important to the Agrarian Nation.  

Canning jars were developed in the early 1800s and utilized a wax-sealed lid that could not be reused. In 1858, Stanley Mason, invented his Mason jar with a reusable screw lid. That jar became a very popular method for rural people to put up food. And, of course, it still is.

If you are ever around Bennington, Vermont, make a point to visit the Bennington Museum. They have an astounding collection of old stoneware made in Bennington in the 1800s.

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In the next installment of Agrarian Nation, I will post a "Farmer's Creed" that was published in the 1881 Maine Farmer's Almanac. It is a remarkable statement of beliefs ("sound doctrine," the editor says of it) that gives us a much clearer understanding of what good farming was all about back then (and it wasn't just about growing food).

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—1859– Hints And Directions ForDestroying Insects InjuriousTo The Farm And Garden

#8

DEFENCES—Lime, charcoal dust, ashes, soda ash, salt, soot, snuff, sulphur, suds of whale-oil soap, sprinkled upon plants, or about their roots, prove a defense against many destroyers.

FIRES—A bright fire of resinous pine, tar, shavings, or any other combustible, kindled in the garden at night, on a platform erected for that purpose, will attract and destroy millions of insects. We do not advise this near barns or dwellings. The man who burned his barn to get rid of the rats is not thought to have gained by the operation.

BOTTLES—Wide-mouth bottles, partly filled with molasses and water, and hung up in the garden, make excellent traps for the moths, which are the parents of many destructive insects.

THE ONION FLY—To destroy this, a writer says, “As soon as you see the plants wither, from the maggot at the root, heat water, throwing in while boiling a quantity of tansy. Apply to the bed with a water-pot without the strainer on it. Do not pour it on the stock.

QUICK LIME— The Red Spider upon vines, the Green Fly upon turnips and cabbages, and the Gooseberry Caterpillar, may be destroyed by watering the plants with lime-water, tobacco-water, or sulphur, or whale-oil soap and water. To prepare lime-water for this purpose; it is only necessary to put a few lumps of quicklime into a barrel of water, over night, and it will be fit for use the next morning. Do not get it too strong.

THE MELON OR SQUASH BUG—These may be destroyed by procuring a quantity, say four pounds, of quassia chips, and putting four gallons of boiling water over them; cover over and let stand twelve hours. Water the plants daily with this until out of danger. Another way is to take hen manure instead of quassia, and make a strong decoction as above, and apply. Another way is to cover the surface of the vines and hills with powdered plaster of Paris as soon as any of the insects appear. Another way is to place shingles near your vines at night, and every morning look under the shingles, and consign the bugs to hot water, or crush them with your foot. Many of the bugs may, in the day time, be removed, in small gardens, from under side of the leaf by hand.
[Thomas’s]

 
...Bonus Excerpt...
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—1871—

To Prevent Birds Pulling Corn

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"Take a quantity of corn, soak it until it becomes soft, then string it on a horsehair or thread, one kernel to each thread or hair. When your corn is coming up throw this on your field. The birds will pick it up and swallow the corn. The thread or hair will stick in their throats, and in trying to get it out, they will scratch out their eyes. Be careful that your hens do not get at it."

[Maine]

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Now, mind you, republishing these old agricultural excerpts does not mean I endorse all the old ways. 

The charcoal dust mentioned above is, I'm quite sure, wood charcoal, the ashes are wood ashes, and the tar is pine tar

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The next installment of Agrarian Nation will feature a method from 1873 for preserving eggs fresh for six months, how to preserve hams (1826), keeping tomatoes year round (1843), and preservation of apples (1845)... all without refrigeration.

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—1859—How to Enrich the Farms andFarmers of New England

#7

"Peasant Spreading Manure" —  by the French painter Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875)

Enriching the farm enriches the farmer, and the foundation of it all is manure. The use of manure is a condition indispensable to the existence of New England farming. It may be made on the farm, or it may be in a concentrated form, like guano, superphosphate and sulphate of lime, ground bones, or the other articles sold as fertilizers in the market, many of which are no better than they should be; but there must be manure of some kind, or the crop will rarely pay the labor.

The farm is the place of all others to make manure, and the farmer has no security against fraud and imposition on the part of the manufacturer of an artificial manure; for however good a sample may turn out, a worthless imitation may be sold under the same name the next season, and the money paid for it thrown away. The general rule of the farm should be to buy as little and sell as much as is consistent with judicious management; and buying concentrated manure, as long as there exists a possibility of making a sufficient amount of equally fertilizing substances on the farm itself, is no way to enrich the farm or the farmer. Why not spend a little extra money and labor in saving with scrupulous care, all the liquid manures of the stables and buildings, and applying them either in a liquid form or in the form of a compost?

A barn-cellar is thought essential for the protection of volatile manures, but covered sheds answer very well, and some say better; and if peat mud, loam, street scrapings, and leaves after being used as bedding, are often mixed with the manure-heap, or placed where they can receive and retain the flowage from the stalls, they become valuable fertilizers, especially for lightish lands. But if, after every exertion to make and save the greatest amount on the farm, still more is needed, the best Peruvian guano, from a reliable source, is, on the whole, the cheapest, since its effects are well known, and the cost of transportation and application is but trifling compared with the coarser manures.

The idea should be kept prominent in the farmer’s mind, that it is better to manure well and heavily, so far as he goes, and thus constantly improve the condition of the land, which will, in turn, feed more stock, and this again will furnish more manure to aid in bringing up other parts of the farm. Let him not attempt to cultivate more than can be done well, taking one piece after another, and leaving each in higher condition than when it was taken up.

Economy of manure, and the large amount of fertilizing matter which can be made by proper care in saving all liquid and other manures, is the chief reason, with many, for soiling their cows, or feeding out green fodder in the barn during the summer, instead of pasturing. The profit of this system depends much on the relative cost of labor and land. Where labor is cheap and land dear it is economical. Where land is cheap and labor dear it cannot be done with profit, unless there is a deficiency of manure on the farm, in which case it is cheaper to make it by a judicious system of soiling than to buy artificial manures, with the risks of imposition.

If the amount spent in New England for foreign fertilizers had been spent in extra care and keeping for dairy and other stock, with special reference to the largest quantity of the best manure and the largest yield of dairy products, it would probably have given more lasting and satisfactory result, and our farms and farmers would have been richer. To carry this system out properly, much forethought is needed to save the labor of transportation, by having the crops designed for green feed near the barn, and a good succession of them, as winter rye, followed by corn fodder or turnips, or both, making two or three crops from the same land, with clover and some of the luxuriant grasses, as June grass, the Meadow Foxtail, and the Orchard grass.

Care, system, regularity, and forethought, are the fundamental points of success in farming. With them, farming is safe, profitable, honorable, and healthy; without them, success in any calling is not to be expected. The best investment the farmer can make is on the farm itself; in permanent improvements, which will pay a fair per centage in increased crops, in the rise in value of the land of the whole farm, and in the improved condition and comfort of himself and family. The use of some capital is required in farming, but so it is in other kinds of business, where the profits are no greater when the comparative risks are considered.

Bear this in mind, then, that improvements must begin with an increased quantity and an improved quality of manure. The special object of pursuit, whether it be the raising of stock, grass and hay, united with dairy produce, or vegetables, the various kinds of fruit, or some other salable article will be governed much by the location of the farm and the distance from market. 
[Thomas’s]

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Over on the sidebar I have posted a quote from Wendell Berry that says, in part, "Perhaps they disliked paying cash for energy and fertility that they had previously received in kind from their farms and their good work." In the Agrarian Nation, the energy for farming came from animals, and so did most of the fertility. 

.

When the tractors came, they did not produce fertilizer for the farm, and farmers became more dependent on the industrial system. With that thought in mind I recommend to you How Farmers Became Slaves to the Corporate Masters, which is based on a story by Walter Prescott Webb, official historian of this Agrarian Nation web site. Read it and weep. 

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The next installment of Agrarian Nation will feature an essay from the 1859 Thomas's farmer's Almanac titled, Hints and Directions for Destroying Insects Injurious to the Farm and Garden. But that's not all.....

I will also provide you with a Bonus Excerpt in which you will learn a clever but remarkably devious and bizarre technique from the old timers To Prevent Birds Pulling Corn.

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—1873—Poultry On The Farm

"In the economy of the farm too little importance is attached to the keeping and the profits of poultry.  If this department is properly managed, the income, so far from being an insignificant item, will far more than balance the cost, to say nothing of the good derived from the destruction of insects and vermin that infest our crops.   Fowls require a variety of diet, and however much grain they may have, the desire for flesh food, in the shape of insects, grasshoppers, and grubs of almost every sort, seems never to be appeased.  It is, therefore, highly important that they should be allowed to run at large through the summer, so far as it is practicable.  The good they accomplish counterbalances, to a large extent, the mischief they may do in the garden.

Many fail to get the highest prices for poultry in the market from a neglect of a proper attention to their wants in the course of preparation for this final ordeal.  Fattening poultry ought to be regularly supplied with fresh and sweet Indian meal, or barley meal, mixed in scalding water, or what is better, in milk.  If cooped up, as they should be a t this time, they should have fresh food three times a day, very early in the morning, again at noon, and at night, giving each time as much as they can eat, but no more than will be eaten by the next meal, and if any of it is left, it ought to be taken away and given to the other fowls, before it gets to be sour.  To prevent this the feeding pans should be kept quite clean and pure.

To vary the diet, and so increase the appetite, an occasional feeding of boiled barley is excellent, and a small dish of grains, in addition to their regular feeding, may be kept within reach.  To fatten them rapidly and to excess, mutton suet and the trimmings of loins are often chopped up fine and mixed and scalded with the meal, or boiled in the milk or water before it is used to mix the meal.  It makes a firm fat that the dealers like.

It is hardly necessary to say, that during this course of  preparation there should be a constant supply of fresh and clean water, and a little gravel always at hand.  Fowls depend chiefly on gravel to facilitate the grinding action of the gizzard, and the food does not digest readily without it.  This is a point too often overlooked in cooping fowls to fatten, but gravel, oyster shells, bones, or something of the sort, is essential to the comfort and well l being of fowls, at all times, and especially when confined and highly fed. It is a good plan, also, to have some kind of green food within their easy reach such as turniptops, sliced cabbages, or common green turf, to pick over.   It is conducive to health and contentment, and so to the increase of fat.  Oatmeal may be given as a change from Indian meal, from time to time, but Indian meal is better as the basis of the feeding, as it contains a large percentage of oil, and is very fattening.

Under this method of treatment, two weeks, or three at the most, are sufficient to prepare fowls for the market, and when fat enough, as they will be in this time, they ought to be killed immediately, for an attempt to keep them too long in this state may lead to some inflammatory action which will make the flesh hard, and perhaps unwholesome.

No more than a dozen fowls should be confined in the same coop to fatten, and a coop three feet long, two feet wide, and two and a half feet high, is sufficient for this number.  Set it in the barn, or any comfortable room, two feet from the floor, and where it will be free from any strong light and from all cold draughts of air." 

[Thomas’s]

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Evidently, farmers did not buy scientifically formulated and balanced feed rations from a feed store back in 1873. They also did not have the hybrid Cornish-cross meat chickens we have today, which require high protein diets and are ready to eat in only 8 weeks. But I'll bet the eggs and meat from poultry raised as explained above in 1873 was nutritionally superior and more flavorful than the average eggs and meat raised in the factory farm of today.

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The next installment of Agrarian Nation will feature a lengthy and informative essay from Thomas's 1859 almanac titled, How to Enrich the Farms and Farmers of New England. It's about manure—a topic of great importance to the old farmers.

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—1851—What Can Be Done on One Acre of Ground

"The editor of the Maine Cultivator published, in his useful paper, his management of one acre of ground, from which we gather the following results: One third of an acre, in corn, usually produced thirty bushels of sound corn for grinding, besides some refuse. This quantity is sufficient for family use, and for fattening one large or two small hogs. From the same ground he produced two or three hundred pumpkins, and his family supply of dry beans. From a bed of six rods square, he usually obtained 60 bushels of onions; these he sold at $1 per bushel, and the amount purchased his flour. Thus, from one third of an acre and an onion bed, he obtained his breadstuffs. The rest of the ground was appropriated to all sorts of vegetables for summer and winter use; potatoes, beets, parsnips, cabbage, green corn, peas, beans, cucumbers, melons, squashes, etc., with fifty or sixty bushels of beets and carrots for the winter food of a cow. Then he had also a flower garden, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries, in great variety, and a few choice apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, and quince trees.

Some reader may call the above a “Yankee trick;” so it is, and our object in publishing it is, to have it repeated all over Yankee land, and everywhere else. If a family can be supported from one acre in Maine, the same can be done in every state and county in the Union."
[Thomas’s]

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I am particularly fond of this old almanac excerpt because it promotes and celebrates the idea of food self-reliance on a small section of land (an objective that my family has achieved to a small degree, and hope to do to a greater degree). Such self-reliance was common and widespread for the first 150+ years of American settlement, when we were limited to being an agrarian colony of England (large industry and manufacturing was simply not allowed in America back then).

All of that changed, however, after the Revolutionary War. Independence from the mother country left America free to pursue the fruits of industrialism.

By 1851, when the above excerpt was published, there were numerous large mills and factories in the New England states. Many people had left farm life to work in these factories. But industrial prosperity proved to be a mixed basket of fruit because it brought a series of economic booms and busts. If you have left the life of subsistence homesteading or farming to work in a mill town or city, and the economy crashes, and you lose your job, you are in a bad situation.

The boom & bust cycle repeated itself throughout the 19th century and many people, separated from the security of the land, suffered as a result. In time, I will be posting some Farmer’s Calendar excerpts that allude to such suffering.

I should make it clear that in 1851 the majority of New Englanders were still farmers of one sort or another and self reliant to a great degree. An agrarian culture yet prevailed, but the handwriting was on the wall—Agrarian Nation was slowly but surely becoming Industrial Nation.

As this transition from less individual dependence on the land to greater individual dependence on the industrial providers played itself out over the generations, the periodic economic crashes led to what we today would call “back to the land movements.” These movements were, at root, a return to the sanity and fundamental wisdom of people growing their own food and providing for their own basic needs from the land. That is, I surmise, what prompted the almanac editor to publish the short essay above.

All of this is, of course, pertinent to today and incredibly poignant when you consider that, more than ever before in the history of America, we have a population of people removed from the land and unable to provide for their food needs. Such people are, in  many respects, helpless dependents on the industrial system. It is not a healthy for a nation, or so it seems to me. End of editorial.

For those of you who have trouble visualizing how big an acre is, picture a football field. An acre of land is roughly equivalent to the size of a football field, less the end zones. To be more exact, subtract 27.5 feet from the length of the field and you have yourself an acre.

It might be a good idea to find a football field, climb up to the top seat of the bleachers, and study that area, imagining (after what you have read above) all that could be done in that space.

Then, while you're imagining, consider how much time and work it would take to raise all that food yourself. And, beyond that, would you be satisfied with such a simple diet? I dare say, if more people did work that hard, and more people did eat such wholesome, basic, homegrown foods, more people would be healthier than they now are and probably much more satisfied with themselves. What do you think?

A final observation: I believe the "Yankee trick" comment probably alludes to growing tensions between the North and South during this period in history. Ten years after this excerpt was published (1861), the Civil War began. 


Michael Bunker, in his book, Surviving Off Off-Grid (see sidebar) refers to the Civil War as the War Against Southern Agrarianism. That is, I believe, an accurate description. But I would like to point out that the farmers of the Northern states, and the traditional agrarian way of life in those states were also victims of the Northern industrial powers.

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In the next installment of Agrarian Nation, we will take a look at Farmer's Calendar excerpts for the month of April for the years 1840, 1849, 1850, and 1851.

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—1849—Hogs Fattened on Sweet Apples

"It appears by an article, published in the New York Farmer, that Mr. Wm. Canfield of Schodac, Rensselaer County, N.Y., owns an orchard, wholly grafted with sweet apples, in which he has kept hogs most of the season, where the grass and a little whey were sufficient to promote their growth. 

About the time when hogs always manifest a disrelish for grass, the worm-eaten apples began to fall, sufficiently matured to become eatable. As they advanced in size and ripeness, they became more and more agreeable, and more nutritious, until the hogs began to fatten rapidly on no other food. The trees were therefore shaken or beaten with light poles, so as to throw down a due quantity of the most ripened fruit. This process was continued until the whole herd was become sufficiently fattened. Then Indian corn was given in about half the common quantity, for about one week, and full feeding of it another week. This brought them to the butchering, and the pork was not inferior to that which is fattened in a more expensive manner. One full grown tree, or two inferior ones were found sufficient for a hog, weighing to a hundred and fifty pounds.

In another publication, a writer states as follows: ‘I have tested by ten years’ experience, the value of apples as food for animals. I keep five or six hogs in my orchard upon nothing but apples and a little swill; and have uniformly found them to grow and gain flesh faster than hogs fed upon any thing else except grain. On the first of Nov. they are very decent pork; after which I feed them about six weeks on grain before I kill them and I believe I have as fat hogs, and as good pork as my neighbors, who give to their hogs, double the quantity of grain that I do to mine.’

Not only are apples of use in feeding hogs, but hogs are useful in preserving apples from the curculio, or the worm that injures and destroys a very large portion of our fruit. When swine are permitted to go at large in orchards they devour the fruit as it falls, together with the curculios in the maggot or larva state, which  may be contained in such fruit. If no wormy fruit was ever suffered to lie on the ground, we should soon extirpate this pernicious insect."
[Maine Farmer's Almanac]

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New England farms of 1849 were still largely focused on subsistence, not business, and practically every farm in that region had an apple orchard. What I like about this particular excerpt is the simple practicality of letting hogs feed themselves on the apples in the orchard. No apples are wasted. Money is saved. And the hogs are helping control insects without spraying any poisons.  (If you click the "curculio" link in the excerpt above you will see what curculio damage on apples looks like.)

Another nice thing about this idea is that apples are a perennial crop. No annual plowing and planting is required, and the mature trees will provide a crop for many years to come. 

(click picture to see enlarged view)

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In the next installment of Agrarian Nation we will look at an almanac essay from 1851 titled: What Can Be Done On One Acre of Ground. It so happens that a LOT can be accomplished on just an acre.

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—1873—Little Jack's Melon Patch

Photo by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

“Little Jack’s melon patch is doing wonders this year. The boy thinks his fortune is made, for our market gardener saw his big “nutmegs” yesterday, and offered him a good round price for every one Jack will sell him. 

The little fellow followed grandpa’s advice last spring. I gave him a piece of sandy ground, well plowed, and he marked it out 9 by 9 feet. Then with  a hoe, grandpa advised him to dig holes at the crossing of the marks about as large in circumference as a common corn basket, and seven or eight inches deep. Into these holes a good-size forkful of coarse manure was thrown; then directly upon this, a large shovel of fine manure. The hills were made afterward by drawing the soil from the four corners.”
[Leavitt’s Almanac]

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This very first installment of Agrarian Nation is excerpted from the August Farmer's Calendar essay in Leavitt's 1873 almanac. We are presented with a delightful story about “little Jack” who followed his grandfather’s advice and grew some real nice melons. But the comment about big “nutmegs” was confusing to me. Is “nutmegs” an old word for melons?

Well, the answer to this came to me a couple months ago as I was perusing my way through the Baker Creek seed catalog. My eyeballs skidded to a stop on Green Nutmeg Melon, and I read this description”

Fearing Burr said in 1863, “The Nutmeg Melon has long been in cultivation, and is almost everywhere to be found in the vegetable garden... It is of most delicious excellence... one of the best.” It is a medium-size green-fleshed melon that has a heavily netted skin and rich, sweet, delicious flesh with heavy aroma.

The picture at the top of today's Agrarian Nation excerpt is from the Baker Creek web site.  Those nutmeg melons are probably just like the ones little Jack grew 138 years ago.

How could I not buy a packet of seed from the good folks at Baker Creek? Perhaps you would want to do the same. We can all follow Grandpa’s advice and, hopefully, grow some nutmegs as good as Little Jack’s. If I am successful at this gardening adventure, I’ll post here later in the year with the results.

By the way, I found an online dictionary with this definition for nutmeg melon: 

“A muskmelon vine with fruit that has a thin reticulated rind and sweet green flesh.”

Then I happened upon this Wikipedia entry about the “Montreal Nutmeg Melon,” and learned that particular heirloom melon variety was...

“in its prime from the late 19th century until World War II. It was one of the most popular varieties of melon on the east coast of North America. The fruit was large (larger than any other melon cultivated on the continent at the time), round, netted (like a muskmelon), flattened at the ends, deeply ribbed, with a thin rind. Its flesh was light green, almost melting in the mouth when eaten. Its spicy flavor was reminiscent of nutmeg.

The melon disappeared as Montreal grew. Its delicate rind, suitable for the family farm, was ill-suited to agribusiness. But after a couple of generations, it was rediscovered in a seed bank maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, in 1996 and is currently enjoying a renaissance amongst Montreal-area gardeners.”

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I hope you enjoyed this first installment of Agrarian Nation. Not every posting here will contain as much comment from me as this one. Be sure to stop back three days from now to read a selection of Farmer's Calendar excerpts for the month of April.

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