25.6.24
in the soil
Although for the most part it is true that being here in the soil once or week or more if possible you are as people say very present or very much in tune with the seasons, you see buds swell and bindweed creep along and the gradual change of colour in berry, tomato, hazelnut, leaf, for much of the time you are thinking or should be thinking way into the future so as I wonder if the last just-opening artichokes are worth harvesting or if I should leave them for the bees I am planting out the borlotti beans and pulling up the garlic to dry in the sun, good until next year; yesterday was Midsummer, the Feast of John the Baptist, when in Italy you make the water of Saint John, an infusion of healing herbs or alternatively go around picking the walnuts for nocino, which should be at their plump and still-fleshy best, shell unformed beneath the lizard-green skin.
in the kitchen
Alongside the restaurant I have been focusing on my side hustle (I hate that phrase) if you will excuse the small advert, where since last year’s feast of Saint John or in fact a little later, the seasons in this country being what they are, I have been infusing and straining and blending and bottling and selling my own nocino under the brand ROVO, bramble or briar in Italian, made with strong liquor and good Kentish walnuts from Potash Farm and from The Goods Shed farm, and you can message me if you would like to buy a bottle – or if you have the time and the patience you can go and pick some green walnuts and begin the slow process of their gradual transformation, and we can share notes.
on the page
After acquiring the walnuts for my first batch of nocino from various sources I was told that there were two large trees in the local park which nobody bothered with and that I could easily have picked my fill, if I had taken the time to look; when I was taken by a forager in Sicily to look for bitter greens I was surprised when he simply pulled us over to the nearest field and started looking. Reading Dandelions by Thea Lenarduzzi I am reminded of this fact about foraging, that it is not always a matter of the secret spots that mushroom-hunters claim, not a case of venturing out through the cracks of civilisation into the deep dark wood or the prophet-haunted wilderness but often just of refocusing, of looking more closely at the place where you happen to be.