The snow is nearly gone, the sap is running in the maple trees, and the sun is making its return after a typical cloudy winter. For me this means it’s about time to start the first harvests of the year.
I wish I could say my first harvest would be tapping some maple trees to boil down my own syrup. There are finally a few maples old enough here to get sap from, but the season always sneaks up on me way to fast to be ready to tackle learning that new skill, and getting all the equipment together. Hopefully one day I will. I’ve read that hickory trees can be tapped for syrup as well. I don’t believe I’ve ever tried hickory syrup but I have some nice trees to tap. In the 20+ years I’ve lived here I’ve only ever gotten one hickory nut! The critters around here get to them first, but I bet I could beat them to the sap if I ever tried!
No, my first harvest of the season will likely be a plant you’ll hear me talking much more about throughout the summer, daylilies. It’s a fabulous and underrated food plant that I intend to be using more of. It’s a perennial so I don’t need to plant it each year. In my region they can pretty much fend for themselves once established. In fact, the common wild orange variety can take over areas to the point some consider them an invasive species. It also provides food over a very long period of the year.
At this time of the year daylilies are among the first green things shooting out of the ground, and the shoots are the edible part right now. I shot this photo of one of my daylilies on the 20th of March, the first official day of spring this year. I usually let them grow a bit more before harvesting, but I could have snipped this tender shoot to eat.
Later in the season I’ll be harvesting the flower buds and flowers, both of which these produce in steady quantities. They are called daylilies because each flower lasts only a day. So I don’t feel too bad about picking them late in the day. I’m sure I’ll write more about them as the flowers come into season.
I just wanted to get a quick post out welcoming in the new shoots and letting people know that asparagus, while a relatively early crop, is far from the first thing that can be harvested each year from the garden.
When I saw that first daylily shoot I thought about how growing up crocus would be the first green things we’d see growing in their little spot at the side of the house. Then I remembered that last fall I planted some saffron crocus bulbs. I had to scratch my head a bit to recall just where I’d planted them. Once I remembered and went to look, there they were, matching the daylilies for early timing. Of course with the saffron crocus I’m not going to be eating the shoots, rather I’ll wait until they flower and harvest the stamens for the saffron spice. I’m hoping these do well here and establish a good colony. The real test will be how they look next year. This year they were starting with healthy bulbs from a greenhouse that I planted last fall. If they can’t regrow those healthy bulbs here through the year then they might not last through next winter. We’ll see what happens next spring.
Today I noticed my garlic, also planted last fall, is starting to emerge. You may observe that the garlic sprouts have a similar look to the daylilies. Other plants can look similar at this stage, not all are edible. You NEED to know what you are harvesting if you plan to eat these! I’m not providing any sort of identification guide in this post. Later I’ll likely offer some suggestions for field guides I’ve used, but I’m short on time tonight. So I’ll just say the best way to really know what the shoot emerging is would be to have a history with the land you are harvesting from. I know the daylilies because I see them emerge and grow every year. This landscape is not a mystery to me, but an old friend. To be sure, it’s one that’s always changing and teaching me new things, but a friend who is familiar as well.
As a side note, I suspect that I’ll be writing more short posts about this and that for a while as spring emerges on the homestead drawing me back into a wide range of projects demanding my attention. Hopefully they will be of interest and offer up some useful bits of information.
Studio Snippet
It seems like I’ve been pulled off into lots of different directions lately, keeping me from doing as much metalwork as I’d like. Today, however, I finally got to spend the bulk of the day hammering. The morning was spent raising a group of vessels out in the studio. Then the afternoon and evening I’ve been working on chasing the “shell” design into this piece. I had hoped to finish the chasing tonight, but that’s not going to happen. I should be able to finish this stage of the piece during my next full day of studio work, which will probably be a couple days from now.
Anyway, I like this design style, which I’ve done a couple times before, because it’s a piece that allows for a wider range of patinas than I can normally use on chased work.
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