I’m mostly ready for tomorrow’s farmer’s market. The truck is loaded
with my canopies and tables and Sandy’s pottery and my gourds, along
with Huichol jewelry, beaded figures and yarn paintings. I’ve picked
the produce but haven’t loaded it yet, because at 8:15 PM it’s still
85 degrees out, and I want to keep it fresh.
For tomorrow here’s what I’ve got: oranges and grapefruit; plums;
summer squash; tomatillos; Anaheim chiles; bell peppers; fresh
shallots and onions; garlic; arugula; basil, mint and rosemary. I’ll
also put some Thompson seedless and Concord grape plants in the
truck. I picked the peppers and tomatillos and squash early in the
morning when it was still cool, so the evening picking was relatively
quick. The plums were already in the house, having been picked over
the last three days, but I’m not happy with the plums. For the first
time, a big branch broke on the tree that produces most heavily, and
the plums are not ripening quite right on the tree. These are the
kinds of things that worry me; what is wrong, and why, and what can I
do about it?
In fact, last night was worry night. I had decided to initiate
winemaking with plum wine, as we don’t preserve our plums in other
ways, and it was time to get acquainted with the winemaking process.
Our friend Dennis, down from Washington state for a few days and
staying with us, had accompanied me to the wine- and beer-making
supply store, where we picked up the ingredients for the plum wine
recipe I had Googled: a glass carboy and airlock and siphon tube;
tannin and yeast nutrient and acid blend and Montrachet yeast and
corn sugar and peptic enzyme and Campden tablets, all of them foreign
to me.
Plunging in headlong as usual, I decided to make three gallons,
rather than a more reasonable one gallon. That meant too much plum
cutting and pitting, and it resulted in filling my plastic fermenting
tub more than three quarters high. In the middle of the night I
realized that fermentation might cause the brew to spill over, and
furthermore, I had only assumed that I should triple the ingredients
(the recipe was for one gallon), without verifying it. That led to a
mental monster parade of all the ways I’m heedless and impulsive and
not careful, as I lay awake from 2 to 3 AM and beyond. In the
morning I took hold of myself and reduced the brew by one gallon, in
one decisive stroke thereby significantly improving my self esteem,
if not my character.
Monday at dark, Dennis and I stayed by the fire late into the night,
using the Huichol medicine to see things better. I had been
struggling to find a way to make our little corn ceremonies more
communal and less fraught with tension and grimness. Trying to play
out the Huichol fiestas without a Huichol community has been
problematic for years. In the night I was able to glimpse the
possibility of a better way.
I received a nice note from Robert Forman after my last posting. He
is an American artist who seriously studied Huichol yarn art and
incorporates it in his work, and he knew my old mentor don Lupe and
his family. Daughter in law Simone, my web expert, is linking our
website to his, glueyarn.com. I also got a call back from my old
friend Eliot, who first introduced me to don Lupe and whose support I
wanted to enlist in getting Pachita to eventually move into a house
in Joaquín and Federica’s compound. We agreed on a course of action.
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