THE GATHERING

                                      THE GATHERING

   Just the name, “The Gathering”, I am sure will lead people astray as to what the contents of this “blog” will be. The two words, used together, usually mean a group of people getting together for a specific reason or to receive information of some kind. I guess it would not be too big of a stretch of the imagination to even say, just these two words together could even be considered ominous?

   This “blog” came about because of a conversation I had with an OLD friend. We were reminiscing about our home town, when we were much younger and the subject of pine-nuts came up. It was probably because this is the time of year that started us thinking about GATHERING pine-nuts.

   I am sure there are other places in this country and around the world that do this but when I was young I did not think about that. I only knew we had our own pine-nut forest just below town. I guess because it was so close to town that we could walk there, it became sort of a ritual that when the pine-nuts were ripe it was time for the gathering.

   Gathering the sweet nuts was an interesting thing when I was young--- even to the point of a misnomer or two. One of these was when it was time to gather people would say, “let’s go down the Cedars and get some pine-nuts today." I never did know why the forest below our town was called The Cedars. Of course there were Cedar trees there but the majority was pinion pine.

   There were several ways to harvest the nuts and all of them seemed to me like a lot of work for what you got out of it.

   When we just wanted a few to eat, we usually walked (when younger) or drove down the cedars a little way and then walk around the tree and pick up what we wanted off the ground. When the weather got cold at night and warm in the day the nuts would start falling out of the cones.

   Another way to harvest them if you become impatient, was to go and pick the green cones off the tree and take them home and boil them in a tub of hot water over a fire until they started to open then scoop them out and put them on a dry rock or board or something until they dried out. It only took me one time trying this method, to realize that was NOT the best way. It was a very messy affair. When you finished you had pitch covering everything including yourself.

   The most popular way in our family to do the gathering, was to put a white canvas tarp on the ground under the tree and then send all the kids up the tree like a bunch of monkey’s to shake it any way they could. Some stomped up and down on the limbs, some would grab two limbs and pull them back and forth, and some would take a stick up the tree with them and just poke or swat the cones that had dried out. Then when finished we would gather the nuts, put them in a sack and go to the next tree for a repeat performance.

   As I got older I wondered if anyone driving by, and did not know about pine-nut gathering, would they think we were going through some kind of ritual or ceremony?

   Of course I never thought about the fact we were competing with the deer, squirrels, porky pines and other animals for their winter storage.

   Gathering pine-nuts and eating them was somewhere on the same scale as eating pomegranates, watermelon w/seeds and pistachio nuts. It was a lot of work for what you got out of it. Never the less I was still picking pine-nuts when I left my hometown.

   My Mom used to put pine-nuts in our Thanksgiving Dressing so we knew when the pine-nuts were on we had to get at least enough for the dressing. Of course then the problem was to make sure there were enough left, that did not get eaten, to put in that dressing at Thanksgiving time.

   Probably the biggest “pet peeve”, other than the mess of picking, was when the City Slickers started coming to OUR CEDAR’S and picking our pine-nuts. Of course I wonder what the deer and other animals thought about us taking their winter food supply?

   When we got through with the harvest—big or small—we always got to have a picnic. We cooked a hamburger or had a sack lunch and just enjoyed just being in the great outdoors and playing in the dirt.

   I still get a craving for pine-nuts once in a while in the fall. However I now have become old and lazy so when I do I usually just jump in the car, drive to the store and pay about $10.00 for ½ pound of unshelled nuts and head back home to eat them and reminisce. 

W.R. Baldwin September 2015--- Just Reminiscing