By Scott Chaskey
This essay has been adapted from Chapter 9 of Soil and Spirit, published by Milkweed Editions in May 2023 and reprinted with permission.
Once in his life, a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe… He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.
N. Scott Momaday
Dusk, the swallow’s hour, and a bright moon rises in the east over the North Atlantic. The ocean is near, I hear it, just there beyond the railroad tracks and Amagansett village - a short glide for an osprey - though I cannot see it from my sheltered garden tucked into the back of a Long Island farm field. I am surrounded on every side by robust maples, white pines, an elegant larch, a thick tangle of bittersweet honeysuckle, and the rampant porcelain-berry as I kneel on the sweet-smelling earth, planting beans as the light fades. The varieties of Phaseolus vulgaris are rare, collected by seed travelers from distant places, and I am a willing (and joyful) conservator. New Mexico, Tuscarora Bread, Rafioffi, Purple Stardust, Shinnecock. As the first star appears below the moon, fireflies rise among the grasses, flickering like earthly stars, on familiar terms with this soil. Swallows dip off toward night and I press the last of the varietals, one by one, neatly into the row. This silt loam remembers the moment, as do I, as the last of the seed, Nightfall, fills the furrow. Flash! A firefly, as the living seed, too, remembers the silt.
*******
When Ernst and Katrina approached me, they were desperate. Flower growers on rented land had just been given two weeks to vacate their garden, primarily perennials, planted in a Sagaponack field. They heard word of our community farm - did we have space, a fallow field perhaps, a place to park the plants, if only for a growing season? I sensed they were good growers; their first concern was for the plants, salt of the earth, I thought, an intuition that proved to be accurate. “We’ve nurtured these plants from seed to flower…we can’t abandon them now!” Ernst said.
“You are in luck,” I replied, “there is an acre waiting for you in the backfield, within listening distance to the ocean.”
The lease of one acre expanded to two within a year, and our relationship, reciprocal from the start, matured with the plants. We learned from one another, and the example of a garden surrounded, embraced by a farm created a firmer, fuller experience. Like the soil we tended and the plants we cultivated, our human connection was symbiotic, and our shared attention to this specific silt loam continued to ripen.
As protection from the cold north wind and the storm gusts (and salt spray) from the southwest, and for a gardeners’ privacy, Ernst and Katrina transplanted the maples and pines that now shelter the herb garden I tend. They spaded in a sapling in the southeast corner that today, 40’ in height, extends sweeping boughs to dance in the daily winds and serves as a perch for doves, redwing blackbirds, cardinals, and the sharp-shinned hawk. This larch, Larix laricina, stands alone, the only one of its kind within a wide radius. It knows how to endure, as some larch in British Columbia forests have done for nearly 2,000 years. Larix has inspired legends elsewhere in the world: in forests of the Alps, it is said that kindly spirit beings, the Sailigen, sing among the old growth, though here, so near to the Atlantic, it is the spirit from the sea that whispers through the long boughs. A lovely Greek word for whisper translates into English as psithurism - the sound of wind in the trees - and I hear it through the larch.
One day, Ernst summoned me to witness the results of a month-long project. He gestured at four 50-gallon garbage bins overflowing with odd-shaped earthy tubers. Had I known at the time the history of Apios americana, indigenous to this ground, our discussion would have been prolonged. Ernst and Katrina were ace gardeners, careful and attentive to a seasonal market; they made their living selling flowers and a “weed” that thrived on the support of healthy cultivars must be rooted out. They were thorough, beyond imagining: out of an acre of prime soil, 200 gallons of groundnuts.
Sagaponack, a village just to the west of Amagansett, derives its name from Apios americana: land of the big groundnuts, once a staple food for Indigenous peoples. It is known by other names as well: wild bean, Indian potato, potato bean, hodoimo, cinnamon vine, and groundnut, though the sweet melodic Lenape word, hopniss, captures the wild spirit of Apios (Greek for pear). The Wampanoags taught early settlers how to harvest and cook these groundnuts; they are leguminous, with attractive maroon and white flowers, pea-like in appearance though hardier, with an acrid smell (in my humble opinion). In botanical terms, the tubers are not roots but rhizomatous stems. Like other legumes, the threads of the rhizome interact with bacteria that inhabit the soil; bacteria is adept at capturing nitrogen, the Apios root stems provide a surface for nodules to fix, and the overall soil health is improved. Nearby trees gladly accept nitrogen in exchange for carbohydrates they exude in a process handsomely titled mutualism (a brand of symbiosis). Groundnuts reproduce along the thin rhizome “like beads on a necklace,” writes Tamara Dean.
Though quite high in protein content, 17% (triple that of potatoes), and rich in isoflavone genistein, an anti-carcinogenic compound, Apios long ago fell out of favor. Attempts to introduce the tuber to Germany, France, and Ireland (during the potato famine over a century ago) did not succeed. Perhaps there is something in this humble tuber that rejects popular approval and a place in the produce section of supermarkets.
After Ernst and Regina departed (for a farm of their own), this garden passed through several transformations, and changes of name. Once known as the Gnome Garden, then renamed the Bee Garden, when Mary of Bees’ Needs shifted her bees to a nearby field, we expanded our Chinese medicinal plantings into what is now named simply the Herb Garden. Now, the groundnut has a place to revive, with bees as near neighbors. Our flower growers were indeed weeders without compare, though Apios, native to this soil, found a way to survive (could we ask more of a traditional food source?).
Among the medicinal plants now in residence are several tree species: Cornus officinalis (cherry), Eucommia ulmoides (rubber tree), Platycladus orientalis (arborvitae), Liquidambar formosana (sweetgum), and Zanthoxylum bungeanum (Sichuan pepper). Wild-edibles expert Sam Thayer observes that Apios doesn’t like to be alone; the rhizomes prefer to grow alongside the roots of other plants (plant communication, as imagined by Suzanne Simard, in action). And this we have learned - the base and outer bark of cherry, sweetgum, and arborvitae provide ideal support for the twining vines of Apios. Underground, undisturbed under the young perennial trees and among their roots, the tubers have found another kind of support; they are making a comeback. I welcome the return of the groundnut, encouraged by the interplay of our plantings and what nature interjects.
*******
In 2003, traveling down from the Hudson Valley, Jean Giblette gifted us a handful of plants: Mentha hapolcalyx (mint), Schisandra chinensis, Trichosanthes kirilowii (bitter melon), Lycium chinense (goji berry), and Belamcanda chinense (Blackberry lily). (Jean co-founded the Medicinal Herb Consortium with Peg Schafer, a non-profit group established to connect herb growers and practitioners.) Although our community farm crop list had grown to over 500 varieties of vegetables and flowers, these were assuredly not on the list; a novice again, I spaded the herbs into our nurturing soil. I welcomed the chance - why not? - to join an experimental grow-out of Chinese medicinal herbs. Jean had chosen us as one of five farms to test the viability of these plants in New York state. The synergy was organic - from our first spadeful of Amagansett earth, we have worked to build health in the soil and among the community, which includes plants and people. Jean knew the value of our northern maritime micro-climate: our long growing season is regulated by the ocean temperature (Zone 7 on the USDA map) and Paumanok is a narrow island surrounded by water, giving our fields a natural advantage over landscapes to the north (USDA Zones 4-5). Mind the gap, as the saying goes, between first and last frost to increase your chances as a grower.
For many years, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine have relied on herbs imported from China despite the fact that most ornamental plants grown in America are derived from East Asia. Steven Foster, author of multiple books on the subject, created a quick list of 779 species of medicinal herbs flourishing in gardens and “labeled” as ornamentals. He shared a dream with Dr. Shiu Ying Hu of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum that one day, these healing plants would also be cultivated here in the U.S. In the 1990s, in California, Peg Schafer surfaced as a pioneer in the cultivation of Asian herbs on a market scale, and within 15 years, she experimented with growing over 250 varieties.
The Herb Garden begins to breathe in and out with new life and new cultivars, as I now have time to care for it. Intermingled with the smaller perennial herbs - salvia, dianthus, astragalus, balloon flower (platycodon grandifloras) - we’ve introduced several tree species, now branching out and leafing out to provide more color and cadence (and medicinal quality). In March, long before neighboring plants have given it a thought, the anthesis of Corvus (seed from the Arnold) is inspiring: yellow-flowering umbels appear prior to leaves, though all neighboring plant life is bare. One of the several Mimosas (Albizia julibrissin), long tropical-like foliage that waves in the afternoon sea breeze, flowered this year for the first time, and we harvested the delicate, aromatic pink brush-like flowers for a healing tea. The deep red and green shapely leaves of Liquidambar sing out against the evergreen leafage of Arborvitae. Sichuan Peppers (Zanthoxylum bungeanum) ripen on the spikey bushes - also for the first time this year - clusters of red beads with the red hot black pepper seed encased.
This year, in the center of the garden, not by my design, a robust stalk of Angelica dahurica, grew to a height of 7 feet. I love the architecture of this plant, a member of the Apiaceae family, endemic to the grasslands of north and central China, and vibrant in this garden. The Apiaceae includes carrots, celery, and Queen Anne’s Lace and was once known as the Umbelliferae, a more accurate naming - the delicate flowers and the seeds that follow fan out in a globe-like fashion to form an umbrella. When in flower, the umbels attract an astonishing diversity of pollinators, and I witnessed this August to a surprise guest: a ruby-throated hummingbird. As I knelt in the garden, one-tenth of an ounce of beating heart and wing muscle appeared beside me to feed on the tubular flowers it fancies for seconds, only to dash to the Angelica tree where it hovered for a full 5 minutes on the flattish white flowers of Bai zhi. The Angelica was beyond desirable - though I had never before seen a hummingbird in the Herb Garden, now there were two. These diminutive flyers - Joyas Valadoras, flying jewels - are notoriously territorial; they could not share the nectar of Angelica, and two dark specks of energy rocketed, in chase, into the sky. At that moment, I was reminded of two lines from the Buddhist sutra, the Sandokai (The Identity of Relative and Absolute), though I never, ever anticipated such a visual experience to clarify the metaphor: “The absolute meets the relative/Like two arrow points that meet in midair.” One more of “the earth’s inexhaustible ways of seeing” (in the words of John Hay) a gift of the garden.
*******
Thirty-two years ago, seated on a 1952 Massy-Harris tractor, I seeded a cover crop of rye across this 20-acre farm field to bring it into production. Today, in the Herb Garden that nests between fields of squash and potatoes, I am harvesting a diversity of seeds, seeds that have served a diversity of cultures. The means of transport and tillage is simplified, the soil is improved after decades of regenerative farming practice (based on traditional, indigenous methods), and the messages I receive from maple, larch, Queen Anne’s Lace, Blackberry lily, Balloon flowers still blooming, silt loam, and the southwest wind are more nuanced, layered lightly - I’ve improved too, as a listener.
Among the rare beans I harvest, now that the dried pods crackle, is the cranberry-colored Shinnecock bean, a variety above all others that belongs here. Several years ago, at the NOFA-NY winter farming conference in Syracuse, on the land of the Haudenosaunee, I visited the display table of a champion seed-saver, Lisa Bloodnick, known for her generosity, and for maintaining a collection of 1000 bean varieties “I like the look of this one,” I said, “What is the history?”
Lisa: “That is the Shinnecock bean. A seed saver from Kentucky gave me it.”
Surprised and engaged, I continued: “I am a neighbor of the Shinnecock nation. My children attended school with Shinnecock children, and I gardened with a keeper of their seeds. Will you trust me with them?”
Lisa: “They are yours!”
I returned to Long Island with a small packet and called Shane at his home on the reservation. His immediate question: “Are they cranberry colored?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard about those beans and I have been searching for years!” Shane replied, spirited.
The Shinnecock beans have been on a journey. Lisa was given them by a well-known third-generation seed saver, a Cherokee ethnobotanist from Wild Wood Farm in Artemus, Kentucky, Kris Hubbard. The story is that Kris’s grandfather was given beans by a fisherman from Long Island, and their name reports the provenance. Grown out for years at Wild Wood Farm and by Lisa at Bloodnick Family farm in the Susquehanna River Valley, and by yours truly, the cranberry beans, after an exodus of 100 years, have now returned to their home ground. The variety in coloration reflects the years of travel and the various gardens - the round beans vary from deep cranberry to a light rose to white artfully streaked with red, whether grown in Shinnecock soil or in Amagansett silt loam. When I shuck them, the story shimmers out.
*******
Dawn, almost, though a waning crescent moon rises in the east, just preceding the sun, over the tangled hedge, over the tallest reach of the larch. The sky, an ocean of light, like a tide returning. To the South, a thin river of mist caps the newly seeded field of rye. Here in the garden, within the net of moon-ocean-earth, every living thing reflects like a jewel. The auburn tips of Timothy grass, the three-pointed leaves of liquidambar, the red clusters of Sichuan peppers, the vines of Apios americana intertwined on young conifers. All that is flooded with dew flickers in the early light. There is something in the flight of the sparrow-hawk, in her quick fall from the hedgerow to alight on silt loam, something familiar, remembered, just so, as daylight fills the furrows.
Scott Chaskey is a poet, farmer, and educator. For 30 years, he cultivated crops and community at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, one of the country's original Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects. He served on the Board of the NOFA-NY for over a decade and has served as a founding Board member for The Center for Whole Communities (VT.), Sylvester Manor Educational Farm (Shelter Island, NY), and the Peter Matthiessen Center (Sagaponack, NY). He is the author of This Common Ground; Seedtime, On the History, Husbandry, Politics, and Promise of Seeds; and Stars are Suns. His most recent book, Soil and Spirit, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2023.
Resources:
The Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm, Peg Schafer, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011
If you have not yet read Brian Doyle’s ecstatic essay, Joyas Valadoras, please do. One Long River of Song…..
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