Buck Harper tells the story of the November garden: collards sweetened by frost, sweet potatoes worth the wait, and the porch as part of the harvest. Episode 1 of Buck Harper’s Porch, 4 minutes.
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Transcript
This is Buck Harper. And this week, I want to tell you about Thanksgiving on the porch. And what the garden still has to give, here in November.
So Mabel comes out onto the porch the other morning. Two mugs of coffee. And she’s got that look on her face. You know the one I mean. The look she gets when the garden’s been talking to her again. She settles into the swing, and she says, “Thanksgiving’s coming. And I do believe the garden’s got a few things left to say about it.” Well. She wasn’t wrong.
See, November down here is a funny kind of month. You look out there and the garden looks tired, if you squint at it. Tomatoes gave up weeks ago. Okra went to seed while nobody was watching. But you walk out there with your eyes open… it’s still handing you things. You just have to know where to look. And you’ve got to be willing to bend down for them.
Now, take the collards. Mama always said collards get sweeter after the first frost. And Mama was right about most things. This one included. See, a light frost turns the starch in those big blue-green leaves into sugar. And the pot liquor? Well. It tastes like somebody finally figured out what they were doing. So if you’ve got a row standing out there, listen, don’t pull it all at once. Just pick the outer leaves. Let the middle keep growing. And you’ll be eating greens straight through to Christmas. That’s the thing about living down here. The garden doesn’t quit when the calendar says so. It just changes what it’s offering. And your job is to pay attention. Instead of pouting about the tomatoes.
Now, sweet potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, they ask something of you first, before they give anything back. You’ve got to dig them gentle. Because a bruised sweet potato is a sweet potato that won’t keep. And then you cure them. Somewhere warm, a little humid. A week or two. So the skins toughen up, and the insides turn sweet. Mabel sets ours in the laundry room, on newspaper. And I reckon the whole house smells like a bake sale for a fortnight. But come Thanksgiving… when those cured sweet potatoes come out of the oven with butter and brown sugar, nobody at that table is remembering the waiting. They’re remembering that somebody bothered.
And the porch itself? The porch is part of the harvest this time of year, if you ask me. Pecans are dropping. And you’d best gather them before the squirrels file their own claim. That rosemary by the steps is still going strong. And a sprig of it in the turkey is worth more than anything in a spice jar. And the leaves… well, the leaves are doing what leaves do. Piling up wherever you’d rather they didn’t. So I run the lawn sweeper over the yard before folks come by. Because nobody wants to wade through a drift of pine needles just to get to the front door. You know, I reckon that’s the real lesson of a November garden. It doesn’t hand you a feast all at once, the way summer does. It hands you a little here, and a little there. A mess of greens. A basket of sweet potatoes. A handful of pecans. And it trusts you to put them together into something worth sitting down for.
So if you’ve still got a row of collards standing, go pick some. And if there’s a sweet potato or two left in the ground, dig them up gentle. Give them time to cure. And when Thanksgiving comes, pull a chair out onto the porch afterward. Coffee in hand. And let the garden know you noticed. That’s all for now, folks.
