R&R: Rest and Reset at the Farm

Looking at last year's Farm Journal, it's clear that I was very disciplined all summer.

I skipped boat-rides and social events. I bailed out of cutting hay. I barely weeded the flower gardens.

​But by gum I made progress on that second novel.  

​Which, sad to say, has been pretty roundly rejected.

​Heavy sigh.

As a result, in early 2026, from deep inside the grey, I resolved to strike a better balance between the work of my brain and the work of my little world.  Work being a completely relative term: is it work to plant trees or build a stone wall? Yes and no—but mostly no.

When it's at the Would-Be Farm, and I have the choice early each morning as I sip my coffee and watch the birds nip into the feeder, it feels like play to decide whether I'm mowing or sewing, cleaning or dreaming, and a dozen other less rhyming couplets.  

There are so many options available to me. I am so grateful to be here and now. ​

But to the point, always the danged point: how shall I make different mistakes this summer?   

I asked myself what truly felt like fun.
Not like I have unlimited summers for doing. I mean novel number 3 wants to get done of course, but I wasn't feeling it. 

Invited, my fancy returned to one of the core elements of the Would-Be Farm: Food.

​Euell Gibbons and My Side of the Mountain combined with a hungry childhood has given me a perpetual interest in wild food.  

So I've been conducting even more wild food experiments than usual.  

I try to cook up some milkweed (Asclepius syriaca) leaves every spring, but this year, I experimented with salads made of basswood leaves  (Tilia americana) and lambs quarters (Chenopodium album).  All three taste of springtime green: add a little olive oil and salt and BOOM!  you have a plate of a certain healthy heaven.
​
Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica), oddly enough, make a delicious soup with chicken stock and pureed potatoes..

I also finally managed to gather some cattail pollen.

It's a fleeting crop, Typha, available for harvest for only a few brilliant days in the spring. We are usually away from the farm when it occurs, but this year, I dashed out—pre-airport run—shook a few cattail spikes into a clean milk jug, and won myself a cup or so of yellow pollen suitable for adding to flour.  ​​

No photos, because of course I was on the hop, and impatiently put a lid on the jar of bright gold goodness. Which promptly showed me who was boss by converting itself into a black mass of mildew.

​Blech.

​When a big ole white pine tree (Pinus strobus) was knocked down by a windstorm in early July, I took it as invitation to try four things:

1. pignoli 
2. fermented pine tea
3. mugolio 
4. varenye 

File under: You learn something new every day—Pines produce two kinds of cones: male and female.  

The ones you see first, and the ones commonly used in, say, kick-the-can games, is the mature female cone.

​In the white pine, these cones grow maybe 7 inches long, starting green and little, maturing big and brown.

The male pine cone, which is the one that produces the yellow pollen, is about the size of the tip of a thumb and can usually be found at the end of a branch—a position that allows for for pollen to escape the dense canopy of needles and find purchase in some fertile pine elsewhere.

The male pinecone

Female pinecones

[deleted sidebar speculation about pinecone romance]


Wait, where was I?

Eating a tree, that's where.

Pignoli are the nuts you find in good pesto. They come from inside a pinecone.  Let me NOT recommend the nut of the white pine. Maybe because the female cones were young and juicy, but dez nuts were distinctly turpentiney. Imagine the distilled taste of what pine pitch smells like. 9 out of 10 do not recommend. 

Fermented pine tea is one of those survival-tip food standards. The advice goes like this: Put the young tips of pine boughs into a clean glass jar! Add a bit of sugar! Fill with clean water! Wait for a few days to enjoy a delicious, effervescent drink high in Vitamin C!

My results were different:  Imagine the bastard child of rough Greek retsina wine and pine-tar soap. Complete with tiny, sticky bits of pine-pitch THAT STUCK TO MY TEETH.  

​Maybe I was doing it wrong (the cones might have put it over the top), but wowsa, not a success. I'd rather nibble young pine needles straight up if I'm about to keel over from scurvy.

I had high hopes for mugolio. It's an Italian decoction, and since when has the Italian food tradition led me astray?

(Okay, exception proves the rule, that one fish dish in Sicily that looked like a cupcake and tasted the way Tender Vittles cat food smelled. Oh, and the black squid pasta in Venice). 

Mugolio, aka pinecone syrup, was fun to make: place female pinecones into a big glass jar, layer with sugar (I used some brown coconut sugar that had been languishing on the shelf), and wait for the magic.  As with strawberries, the sugar "sweats" the pinecones. I stirred it every day or so, and after a week, I had a thick, brown, sugary syrup with a light, slightly bitter, aromatic flavor.

Added to ice water, it gave a tonic, medicinal, but very refreshing drink. Mixologists: this would give Angostura bitters a run for the money. 

When I was pondering my five-gallon bucket of pine parts, this final contestant: varenye seemed least likely of the four evergreen foods.

​Frankly, I expected the pine nuts to be good, the tea okay, and the syrup awful.

Though it sounds like a side character from War and Piece, "varenye" is what Siberians call jam made from pinecones.

​My mother was a jam-maker, so I fully appreciate how sugar can transform foods. But pine cones?  And the result would be gorgeous Instagram-worthy petite golden cones perched on a spoon, flavored of caramel?  Ye-okay, let's see.

Varenye starts when you toss equal amounts of young male pinecones and sugar into a saucepan with enough water to keep it liquid as you simmer it. You bring it to a boil, let it cool, then simmer it for a couple of hours, adding water as it bubbles down.  
​
The result was a reddish syrup thick with cone bits, since the male pinecones I used broke apart during cooking. Perhaps I simmered too vigorously.

 Taking a spoonful straight up gives you a complex, rich flavor profile, with plenty of resin—not to say pitch—notes. Nothing caramel in evidence.

This Siberian delicacy is prized more for its medicinal value than for sheer mouth joy, though I do see cooks touting the vision of varenye poured over vanilla ice-cream. 

So, not seeing this replacing my cherry preserves, but I am going to use it when cooking wild game. Or maybe fish. Oooh. 

Next time, on Amy plays with her wild food: linden berry chocolate.