NEWS FROM MARIQUITA: A CSA Journal

You can keep your lemonade …
Life gave me elderberries, not lemons, and that’s just fine with me, says Andy.

By Andy Griffin

We have the elderberry trees on our farm entirely by accident. Our farm fields lie along Pacheco creek, an intermittent stream that runs from the dry hills of the Mt. Hamilton Range into the Pajaro River. Water makes only a seasonal appearance in Pacheco creek, going underground in late spring to wait until next fall’s rains before rising to the surface again. Throughout the summer the watercourse is tangled with brambles and beaded with occasional puddles. In the old days when fruit was a luxury on the frontier the pioneers would walk the creek beds to gather elderberries for pies. Almost any fruit, no matter how sour or tannic, will taste good with enough sugar. These days, with such a glut of cheap fruit in the supermarket no one (well, almost no one) would consider cooking with elderberries, and absolutely no one plants them.

Birds planted the elderberries on my farm. Before we leased these acres the land was fenced in corrals and the owner boarded horses. The birds ate wild elderberries in the creek then sat on the corral fences singing “tweet, tweet, tweet.” Eventually elders sprouted under the boards of the corrals. The horse ranch went broke, the elder saplings tapped into the water table, and soon there were rows of elder hedges bordering the fields. When I started farming the land we removed the fences but not the elders. I had read that it is bad luck to kill an elder, besides; I wanted trees for wind breaks and habitat. We irrigate the fields so the elders are growing lush. Seeing the elder boughs loaded made me wonder how I might sell the berries.

As a kid my neighbor Lois would employ me to gather elderberries for pies that she would enter in the county fair. Lois was a fabulous cook, and because her pies had a historical flavor that conjured up Monterey County’s past she would always win first prize. Gathering wild fruit is way too expensive to contemplate now, but I have what amounts to an accessible commercial planting. I’ve taken elderberries to the farmers market in San Francisco. The purple berries add a dash of novelty to our stall and some chefs have purchased them to jazz up their own menus. They tell me the tartness of elderberry jelly makes for an interesting contrast with the richness of wild game and their wild natures complement each other. An elderberry syrup over a handmade ice cream makes for a luxurious desert, too.

For me, the most fun has been inviting market customers out to the farm to pick their own elderberries. So few people cook anymore, especially with ingredients most relevant to centuries past. But the people who do cook, the people for whom convenience is an over rated virtue, the Slow Food aficionados, these folks know how to have fun. They make elderberry wine. I don’t have the time to make wine but I’ve got some bottles received as gifts mellowing on the rack. You keep your lemons and your lemonade; I’m doing just fine with wine.