Feast of the Forests and Fields

Feast of the Forests and Fields

By Jarrod E. Stephens

The Ashland Beacon

Living in the “land of plenty” as we do here in America, it is easy to take for granted the food that we eat. Family dinners and picnics are common and whenever there are special dishes prepared by special people, the times are even more “special.” Growing up on a farm, we never had to wonder about where our food was going to come from because everyone had a hand in either planting, working and harvesting the food, and perhaps, all three tasks. Our food primarily came from the fields and the woods. Sure, we bought food like other “normal” people but working our mainstay from its beginning to its end is something that everyone should experience.

Having grown up in a farming and hunting family, I developed a greater appreciation for exactly where our food comes from. In this prepackaged and premade world that we live in, there are few who stop to consider the blessing of seeing your hard work literally become the food that you eat and share. For our family, springtime was always welcome because of the warming temperatures, but hard work followed as well. Early peas, lettuce beds and cabbage were the first crops planted and of course, the first ones we got to enjoy. Beans and corn were planted as soon as the threat of frost was gone.

Timing for each planting was precise, and boy, whenever the beans were ready to pick, canning season began. Beans were followed by tomatoes and corn which would also be canned and preserved for winter sustenance. It wasn’t clear to me at the time why we didn’t just buy all of our food like other people. Why did we have to put our food in glass jars and not just buy stuff with pretty labels? It just seemed like a lot of extra busy work to me. Boy, was I wrong.

I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed picking, stringing and breaking those beans. I’d also be telling a whopper if I said that I ever complained about them whenever we opened jars of beans for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. By mid-August, much of our canning was completed, and my infatuation with the harvest of squirrels would begin. A lot of lead was flung up into the branches of the hickory trees, and hundreds of squirrels came home with me over the years. Actually, I harvested more than 100 squirrels in a season more than once. Fried squirrel and squirrel gravy with biscuits were commonplace on the table.

Our annual tobacco crop, which was harvested in August and early September, would reach full cure in the month of November. Every outdoorsman knows that November doesn’t just usher in chilly weather, but also rabbit and deer seasons. Each year as the tobacco was being stripped in our dark and cold strip room; we had a bit of a tradition that I miss so badly. In spite of the miserable chill, our little beagles loved to hunt rabbits on the coldest and frostiest mornings. Whenever we would go to the barn, Dad would also take along his 12-gauge shotgun and turn the beagles loose. Side by side, we’d stand for hours and pull the long brownish-red leaves from the tobacco and put them into the baling boxes.  

In the meantime, we’d listen for the dogs to get a rabbit running. The sound of their barking chorus was our call to go to the field and try to get the rabbit. Dad would tote the shotgun and off we’d go. The crunchy weeds and weathered goldenrod stems snapped under our feet as we walked across the overgrown fields. It seems like it was yesterday, and I recall watching my dad shift his focus sharply on some movement in the weeds just ahead of the pursuing dogs. Intently he watched, eyed the running rabbit, and fired a barrage of number 6 shot.

The rabbit tumbled and the dogs eventually tracked their way to what would be a fine piece of our dinner. When my brother and I were old enough to go deer hunting, it became our objective to bag a nice buck each fall. Of course, we trophy hunted for the biggest buck we could find but settling for a doe wasn’t shameful at all. Through the years, I’ve heard folks grumble, “I just can’t eat deer meat. It’s too tough and tastes too strong.” My reply is typically, “You’re just a bad cook.” You can’t cook deer like beef and expect it to be scrumptious.

My mom, like so many ladies of her generation, creates delicious meals from any kind of meats and vegetables. Breaded deer backstrap, or what we call Salsa Roast, is one of our favorite ways to enjoy fresh venison each year. When you pair our hunting harvests along with corn pudding or creamed corn the way my Mamaw Boggs made it, getting up from the table was tough. The traditional way of life is still alive and well in my household. My boys get to grumble in the springtime and summer as they plant, tend and harvest the garden goods.

They also get to enjoy the bounties of our harvests year- round. Thankfully, my wife has the gift of good cooking skills and is always willing to learn how to properly cook all veggies and wild game to near perfection. One of our favorite fall and winter dishes has become our homemade vegetable soup in which we put an assortment of our vegetables. The soup is canned in late summer as the garden is full of a variety of fresh goodness. Like all good things, the soup takes time to initially prepare and can, but it is worth the toil whenever you can make a quick Thanksgiving or Christmas meal with it.

So much has changed over the years, but many things have remained the same. We’ve all grown older, (hopefully wiser) and we still enjoy our time together as we pursue and grow the food that we enjoy throughout the Christmas season. Thanks to the blessings from our Great God, our table is never empty, nor is our hope for lasting memories.

The faces around our tables may change over the years, but the hard work and love that binds us as family is stronger than any earthly bond when we pass on our heritage to the next generation. The old tobacco barns stand empty, but my memory is still full of the sights and sounds of those crisp mornings as we worked to prepare the crop for market, and Dad managed to turn it into a rabbit hunt. I can almost hear the beagles running.