Let the Harvest Begin

I love August. Temperatures more to my liking won't being until next month but it's the beginning of harvest time. Corn is picked – the sweetest of the sweet. The kind of stuff you'd kill for during the long winter months when the corn you find tastes like wilted cardboard. You've got a small window on blueberries and you know fresh raspberries & cranberries will be coming your way anon. Squash is available and all manner of gourds ready themselves for your pleasure. I have been listening to an audiobook by Anthony Bourdain wherein he travels the world and eats. He goes to a few fancy restaurants but most of his tales are about hanging out with the salt of the earth. The biggest refrain of the book is the word "fresh". He says it a million times over the course of five CDs. Bourdain visits folks who live near their food sources so vegetables are picked that morning and a pig is slaughtered for dinner that night. Pursuant to this and a previous post of mine, The Dulcinea, M., and myself hopped in the car yesterday and zipped up to Poynette for a visit to Lapacek's Orchard.



We were greeted by a big, shaggy dog whose fur was filled with the detritus you get from living outside - dirt, leaves, and probably a few bugs. He didn't seem to mind, though. A woman, presumably Mrs. Lapacek, was walking towards us from the house behind us yelling at the dog. I think his name was Mitch, if memory serves. She needn't have worried because Mitch was very friendly and, as I rustled around the trunk, I extended a hand and scratched behind his ears. It was a beautiful day and the orchard was nestled in the gently rolling hills east of town. We wandered inside and, much to my dismay, discovered that it wasn't a pick-your-own joint. They had only been open a couple days and a mere handful of varieties were available as it was still early in the season. The proprietors were a young couple and, just like Mitch, both of them were extremely friendly. Mrs. Lapacek greeted us cheerfully a second time and almost immediately directed us to some baskets where we were given free samples. M got a William's Pride, The D a Paulared, and I ended up with a Zestar. Mein apfel war sehr scharf! Juicy, tart, and just plain tasty. The Paulared was much sweeter. A bag of them was $3.50 but the Zestars were twice as much. They're very popular and go quickly, we were told. Mrs. L was very helpful and offered suggestions to match varieties to how it was going to be eaten. "These are good for eating," she said, "while these are great for applesauce." My mind kept getting distracted with visions of my kitchen where I stood there rolling out dough for apple pies and watching as my apple fritter batter rose from the ale I had put into it.

There was also some corn for sale as well as several flavors of chilies, squash, and some of the finest looking red onions you'll ever lay your eyes on. These puppies were big and shiny and I knew that there were tomatoes and chilies in our garden just waiting to meet that onion in a big bowl of pico de gallo where the marriage of their flavors could be consummated. An adjoining room had gifts such as clothing, jewelry, and bric-à-brac of all sorts. Through a set of glass doors in the back was the apple sorting room with Mr. L and another older gentleman who were at work. They were being helped by someone you'll see in a moment. Through a window next to them some curious-looking heads bobbed and weaved in and out of view. What were these creatures?



They had emus! Two of them.





I don't have a good photo of their feet but they were enormously long with vicious-looking claws. Best not to get into a dust-up with one of these birds. They poked their heads through the bars of the fence and generally just looked around at the strange creatures before them. M occasionally walked perilously close to the fence and I readied my camera for a Fox-like When Emus Attack! moment. Alas, it never arrived.

Back inside, I asked the Mrs. L about the Wolf River apples that I had read about. "Do they really get to be a pound apiece?" I asked eagerly. "Are the legends of one apple per pie really true?" Indeed they were, she assured me. In fact, she seemed slightly surprised that I had never heard of them before. They would be ready around the 15th of next month as would other varieties, cider, and, if memory serves, some cows to distract the attention of the kids. The older gentleman wandered in from the sorting room and I chatted him up a bit as well. These people knew apples and I was extremely jealous because I am woefully ignorant of them but I'm slowly learning. (I wonder what the older hippies types at the Willy Street Co-op would think if they found out that some of their favorite apples weren't around when Johnny Appleseed was doing his thing. Instead they might just be biting into an apple developed across the Mississippi at the University of Minnesota during their lifetimes.) I was also shown to a sign-up sheet for their electronic mailing list so I gleefully have them my e-mail addy. In about a month my inbox will have a message stating that Wolf River apples are available and I'll be trekking north once more.

Before we left with bags of apples, an onion, some chili relish from a place in Baraboo with the delightful prog rock name Hawkwind, and a couple other odds and ends, I grabbed this photo:



That's the youngest Lapacek. She was interminably cute sitting there watch her father sort apples as the emus peered in through the windows with Mitch resting on the cool concrete floor.

Despite not having been able to pick some myself, the trip was well worth it. The proprietors were extremely friendly, I got to see some emus, and then drive away with a bounty.

The Lapaceks reminded me of that Frontline documentary The Farmer's Wife. Agriculture is Wisconsin's biggest industry and politicos have been on the television talking about ag bills and farm subsidies lately. Listening to Herb Kohl talk is annoying enough but it's made worse when you come away not knowing anything more than you did when you started. I recently watched an interview with him and came away no smarter when it came to farm bills than I was before watching it. They're still a mystery to me. There's a lot of talk about saving family farms but it's all-too rare to actually hear the farmers themselves saying it. I am totally in favor of helping family farms and preventing their lands from becoming subdivisions. And so it was just nice to actually go to a family farm and meet the folks who live and work there. Yet I am forced to wonder if Lapacek's Orchard will still be around when that little girl grows up.