GETTING READY FOR WINTER

            It has been my lot to live most of my life in latitudes characterized by four distinct seasons, most of those years in places where winters are long and severe. Thinking about that, I realize that there has been a fifth season as well; for want of a better designation I will call it “Getting Ready for Winter Time.”

            The northern New Jersey family home into which I was born was already 150 years old, having served as a stage coach stop and Inn since shortly after George Washington’s embattled troops were escaping by the skin of their teeth from New York City. Its twelve rooms wandered through four floors, including a basement which had once housed servants who prepared meals carried upstairs by a dumb waiter. It was built long before the word “insulation” took on its present meaning, and getting ready for winter was a dread thing to contemplate. I cannot even recall the exact number of heavy, glass-paned storm windows which had to be cleaned, re-puttied, lifted into place and hung to take the place of their screened cousins which of course had to be cleaned before their journey to a corner of the cellar for a winter’s respite. Then my mother’s “summer” carpets had to be replaced by their heavier and even clumsier “winter” versions, with all the “beating” and “moth ball treating” which had to take place before rolling them up on bamboo rods and hauling them to their storage loft until Easter time when they would fittingly rise-from-the-dead once again.

            Then of course, my father gardened a half-acre whose harvest of vegetables and fruit had to be dealt with along with up to a hundred chickens and ducks whose quarters required a special seasonal clean-out. With the arrival of WW II, all of that became even more important, still leaving time for us to gather milkweed pods in the woods and fields for the war effort; not to forget scrap metal drives for us kids and bandage-rolling for our Moms.

            During this stage of my life, we also rode out the “Great Hurricane of 1938,” which I realize now underlined the wisdom of everything else the times and seasons of everyday life in the Depression and WW II era was teaching me, and probably started the clock ticking on a later life devoted largely to the field of Disaster Planning and Emergency Management.

            The move to a Vermont hillside farm in 1947 only added new dimensions to the term Getting Ready for Winter, especially with an environment whose climate history promised temperatures below zero for weeks at a time and heavy snowfall. Once the barn had been filled with hay, grain and silage for the livestock, it would be time to split, haul and stack the 20 cords of maple, beech, birch and ash we had been cutting and setting aside to dry and cure throughout the previous months, not only to heat a large un-insulated farmhouse built in the 1890s, but to fuel the maple syrup production in February and March.     To reduce the penetration of winter winds, it was necessary to erect a protective shield around the home’s foundations by wrapping rolls of heavy tar paper behind which the resulting cavity could be filled with hay, straw or fall leaves hand-carried in baskets after which strips of wood could be tacked to keep out snow and moisture. Our water supply, crucial for house and out-buildings, flowed from a hillside spring a quarter of a mile away. During cold-weather months it was essential that this flow never slowed or stopped. (This happened one New Years day for a small neighboring farm house in which Shirley and I took up residence when we returned to civilian life. I had to haul all of our water in ten-gallon milk cans until the thawing days of June!)

            As luck would have it my tour in wartime Korea put me in the very northern outposts we occupied in the winter of 1952 where the extreme storm tracks born in Siberia made the canvas of our tents seem very thin, sometimes freezing the zippers of our first sleeping bags. After several deadly nighttime bayonet attacks on front line positions, snaps replaced zippers. (I still continued to keep my .45 sidearm inside with me!)

            Today, I actually look forward to the delivery of 2 cords of cut cedar which I insist on splitting and stacking myself; whether sentimentality or foolishness, I dare not guess.

STOCKING THE PANTRY WITH CULINARY MAGIC

            Some of my well-intentioned friends and acquaintances are given to attaching the word “chef” to my adventures in and around our kitchen and in my well-known proclivity for writing, speaking or even occasionally teaching about food and food history. They are, of course, venturing very close to good-natured hubris when they do so. I am not a chef. I am just a guy who loves to cook; and for that I offer no apology.

            Along with that lifetime love affair is an appreciation of the whole wide world of ingredients – those constituents which when combined in just the right way make the finished product better than the sum of its parts. What’s more when it comes to ingredients I tend to be highly opinionated. For instance, let’s look at favorite sweeteners. Since I practically grew up in an old-fashioned Vermont Maple sugar house coaxing 30-50 gallons of fresh cold sap into a single gallon of just-drawn hot syrup, I take our present-day basement supply very seriously. Quite apart from a Grade of A medium amber classification, I like to know who made it. If possible, I buy my maple syrup from Maple Crest Farm in Shrewsbury, Vermont, where seven generations of the Smith family have been tapping the trees their ancestors planted. I know how they take care to keep every piece of tubing and storage tanks gleaming clean. And most important: no blending of batches here in an effort to simulate uniform viscosity levels.

            The pantry shelf sheltering my supply of honey reads like a saccharine geography of the world, every jar representing a “single source” honey whose blossom of origin is proven by pollen testing. (Typical “supermarket” honey has had its pollen removed to preserve its liquid appearance and make possible unlimited blending; it is no more than a “sweetening.”)  One of my favorites is Chestnut blossom honey from Tuscany where beekeeper Franca Franzoni personally manages the daily positioning of her beloved hives, while I half believe the assertion that the reason I like Sourwood honey is the knowledge that bees are joined by angels in its production. On each visit to Oregon I add to my supply of “mainstays,”such as blackberry, blueberry and Marion berry blossom honeys acquired from local farmers’ markets or apiasts I have come to know. A Northwest honey aged in whiskey barrels is unique.        Some single source honeys are particularly “dear” since they are not necessarily “annual” or have a harvest season so short it can be missed because of a brief weather change. My supply of delectable locust blossom honey from the Ames family farm in Watertown, Minnesota is an example. (My present supply comes from hive number 608A.) From Montana dandelion blossoms to the Neem flowers whose pollen is gathered from the dense forests of central India, each honey is different from every other honey.

            When it comes to olive oils of choice, there are some similarities in preference. For everyday cooking, an inexpensive “supermarket” quality extra virgin will do just fine, but for dressing a fresh salad, flavoring a pasta dish, assembling a dipping sauce, or adding a nuanced flavor to something special, it would be nice to have an estate – made premium select extra virgin oil from a single source, where olives are picked by hand and pressed within 24 hours of harvest and never blended. I like a Lucini Limited Reserve Tuscan oil. I admit also to a slight personal preference for Italian over Spanish oils.

            The term Balsamic Vinegar from Modena has come to describe a wide range of vinegars of 6% acidity made from Trebbiano grapes. They are all useful and satisfying but if budget considerations allow and one wishes to own something of incomparable “wonder” here is a worthwhile treasure to hunt for: barrel-aged traditional Balsamic vinegar. Here the Trebbiano grape “must” (fermented grapes, stems, seeds, skins and all) go through a long aging process beginning in oak barrels with the reduced quantity of juice decanted each year into a slightly smaller barrel made from a succession of different hardwoods  including cherry, chestnut, mulberry, acacia, juniper and ash. The aging process might stretch across 12 – 150 years, resulting in a finished product as thick as honey and super-rich with the accumulated flavors of ancient woods and long mellowing. On my pantry shelf (some cooks would keep it in a safe) reclines my treasured three liquid ounces of 25-year-old traditional Balsamic vinegar, to be drizzled sparingly on fresh figs, strawberries or a slice of my 4-year-old white cheddar; ahhh, living large!

As Trebbiano grape “must” ages in barrels, its volume being reduced by time and osmosis, it progresses through stages into ever smaller hardwood barrels of tradition-proven species, overseen by Italian families passionate about following ancient techniques.

WWII “WIZARDS” WHO HELPED SHAPE THE ALLIED VICTORY

            So immense and sprawling is the very landscape of World War II History that books on the subject number in the hundreds of thousands. Even dedicated researchers and historians can only touch the surface of a story of such mind-bending dimensions. Questions which have long tantalized, and continue today to invigorate military chroniclers and experts revolve around “how” and “why” the Allies managed to win a “total victory” over a combined Axis enemy which at its pinnacle occupied or controlled most of Europe and Asia while denying the free flow of shipping across the Atlantic, the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well as the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas; to say nothing of near-absolute control of the skies over the vast territories they occupied. Britain itself avoided invasion and conquest only because of a handful of courageous flyers, superior fighter aircraft and a supply of high-octane aviation fuel from the “neutral” United States.

            Many would-be prognosticators point to the allies’ secret code-breaking capability (Ultra,) others to America’s 4-engine strategic bombers, and the P-51 Mustang long-range fighter; the success of the Normandy operation (“Overlord,”) and the Atomic bomb are of course always nominated as major winning factors. And then there are the names: “giants” of military and civilian leaders like Roosevelt, Churchill, McArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, Halsey, Nimitz, Arnold and dozens like them whose contributions to victory guarantee a place in our long national and institutional memory.

            Less known and celebrated are a host of lesser “heroes” who never made headlines or were honored with ticker tape parades, but whose contributions saved lives, won battles, resolved the irresolvable, or otherwise hastened eventual victory. For instance, how many of us on the west side of the Atlantic have even heard of Percy Cleghorn Stanley (Hobo) Hobart?  How many of us are familiar with “Hobart’s Funnies” or can even guess at the lives they saved?

            A graduate of England’s Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and a veteran of the trenches of France in WW I, “Hobo” took an early interest in armored warfare and saw a promising future for the tank. In 1934 he became Brigadier of Britain’s first armored Brigade and began his life-long fight for funding and materiel support for battlefield preparedness for his mechanized field forces, and a recognition of the future role of armor in military planning. In the process he managed to arouse bitter resentment on the part of senior officers who came from the traditional ranks of horse cavalry advocates. Despite this and against the opposition of a particular senior commander, he managed to create a British Mobile Force in Egypt which became the 7^th Armored Division – the famous “Desert Rats” of WW II.  In 1940, with war on Britain’s doorstep, Major General Percy Hobart was ordered into retirement by those who had been “annoyed” by his unconventional ideas. Hearing of this Winston Churchill sent a salvo over the War Office:  “We are now at war, fighting for our lives, and we cannot afford to confine Army appointments to officers who have excited no hostile comments in their career.”

            Back in the saddle again, Hobert was given command of the “79^th (Experimental) Armored Division Royal Engineers” and was turned loose to apply his inventive talents in developing new applications of armored warfare. Working with the American “Sherman” tank and its British version the “Churchill,” his inventive genius produced a procession of specialized “hybrids” designed to address failures experienced and lessons learned in the disastrous Dieppe raid. The armored “flail” tank was one example: a Sherman/Churchill with a rotating series of chains in front which could be driven onto a beach or sand-hill clearing a path through an area seeded with grenades and explosive devices through which the following units could safely get ashore or proceed. The presence of “flails” made possible successful landings of British and Canadian troops on Normandy’s Juno, Sword and Gold beaches, while the American Omaha and Utah beach landings proved costly and nearly fatal without such wonders.

Known as the Crab this Hobart Sherman “Funny” used chain flails to clear land mines and explosives.

                                                                        Photo courtesy Borden Military Museum, Ontario, Canada

            Other examples of what the troops quickly nick-named “Hobart’s Funnies” were tank chassis which when driven across a dry wash or stream bed became a “bridge” for following mechanized pieces to cross over, while still others had cutters designed to take out whole sections of barbed wire or steel barriers. Further extensions of “Hobo’s” ideas included tanks or dozers fitted with the giant “Rhinoceros” perfected further by U.S. Army Sgt. Curtis Culin, with “teeth” that could penetrate, pick up and move aside huge chunks of the previously formidable hedge rows which had delayed the progress of allied troops long after they were safely ashore in Normandy’s bocage country.

            Major General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart KBE, CB, DSO, MC, (“Wizard Extraordinaire”) died at his home in Farnham, Surrey, U.K. in February 1957 at age 71.