October 16, 2008 - North Fork fall, now and thenOctober 16, 2008 •The Suffolk Time
or or k fa
now an
en d
umpkins rule the day right now at our local farm stands.
The changing seasons are what —
make living here on the North Fork
so rewarding. Right now the trees are
dressed in their fall attire. It seems like
every living thing is trying to outdo all
the others. It's Nature's last chance to
put the final touches on its many gar-
dens. It's a time when all are preparing
for winter's bag of tricks.
If you were to ask someone what
the most important sign of fall is,
they'd probably say, "Pumpkins,"
or, "No, I think the fall colors of the
trees and bushes," or, "It's the honk-
ing of geese as they fly south on their
fall migration." There are so many
signs of ti fall
season, it s re-
FOC U S ally hard to pick
O N+ a winner.
I guess if you
NATURE
were one of
the old -time
by Paul farmers you'd
StOutenburgh probably say,
-- "Digging po-
tatoes tells the
story of fall, along with the cutting
of cauliflower and the vickine of
sprouts." I'm sorry to say iarmlug,
as we once knew it, is slowly disap-
pearing here on Long Island.
Being brought up in an area
where the potato was king, we
naturally ate potatoes at least once
a day, and sometimes twice, when
potato pancakes were for lunch
The reason we ate so many pota-
toes was that they were so cheap.
For practically nothing a few years
ago you could buy enough potatoes
to last you all winter. There was
even a time when a farmer would
let you pick up small potatoes after
he had gone through the field. Our
good neighbor Pete would let the
kids go out and fill up bags of little
potatoes that had fallen through
the grader. Today those same little
potatoes are bagged up and sold in
our super markets for a good price
As potato farming became less
and less common, something new
filled its place: grapes. This new
enterprise of growing grapes also
has its climax in the fall, when the
grapes are picked and brought in
for processing. Then .with tender
loving care they are transformed
1
ato some of the very finest wines.
I was introduced to the making
of wine many years ago, before the
irst wineries arrived; when I experi-
mented in making some of mv own.
I'm sure I i n t always use the right
grapes and my proportions of the
ingredients weren't always just right,
nevertheless I had fairsuccess.
I even built a wine rack in our
Homemade wines are usually made with grapes that are readily ay.
Here you see some of the grapes I used in my wine — from one of the
homesteads here on Long Island, the Howell Farm in Southold.
Years ago, before vineyards came to the North Fork, I played with maki
wine with the grapes that were available. The best part of winemaking
when you cork your wine and put it to rest for future use. Here you see an i
Iltalian device I used to cork the bottles.
basement w ere I eventually stored
all sorts of homemade wines such as
peach, strawberry, dandelion and, of
course, grape. Some of it was pretty
bad but it was an adventure, and to
this day there are probably still a
few bottles collecting dust on the
little -used wine racks.
The.photo along with this article
shows me bottling some of my wine
using a remarkable corker that I
got at a yard sale. It has the slickest
mechanism for squeezing the cork tc
the size of the opening in the bottle
and in the same downward motion
a plunger pushes the cork into the
bottle. It's some neat machine!
There's something special about
fall on the North Fork; you can feel
it, you can see it, and at certain
times you can smell it. It's a combi-
nation that only Nature can brew.
The pumpkins I spoke of ear-
lier are picked up and hugged
by the children as they plead to
their parents, "Please buy me this
one!" Some will be taken home
and painted with Halloween faces.
Some will be cut into gaudy faces
and candles will be placed inside
and lighted. Still others may be
cooked up and made into delicious
pumpkin pies. A note from one
who knows: Helen Krupski says the
only pumpkins she uses for her pies
are cheese pumpkins.
My experience with pumpkins
and lighted candles brings me back
to one Halloween when my sis-
ter and I were kids and both had
lighted candles in our pumpkins.
Smarty -pants me had to show her
that if you put your lighted pump-
kin in a dark place it would show
up much better. And where would
that be? Under my dad's big loung-
ing chair. Oh, how the pumpkin
glowed under there!
The only problem was -that the
heat from the candle set the bot-
tom of the chair, on fire and we
kids went screaming to my mother,
who was doing dishes at the time.
She picked up the dishpan, silver
and glasses still in it, turned the
chair over and doused the fire with
the dishwater! Needless to say, we
didn't have lighted candles in our