May 2008 Almanac
This Month: Oh, Mr. Fisherman, Your Garden Is Calling
Serious hunters and anglers often garden, too, and they are serious about it. Sometime around Memorial Weekend, they take a day off from fishing, often the best angling of the year, to till and plant their gardens.
Often, these gardeners are superb deer hunters, and if you hadn’t noticed, folks whose vegetables win blue-ribbons at fairs are also superb deer hunters, and why not? All these endeavors have a common thread — food gathering.
Some of these “dirt farmers” begin planting cold-weather crops in April as soon as the soil turns friable, and they get in leafy veggies such as kale, spinach and lettuce as well as sow the biggie — peas.
These folks want this legume for the 4th of July celebration, which includes that all-time patriotic dish — salmon and peas. When an outdoors type furnishes the salmon from a Maine lake and peas from the home garden, it smacks of tradition spanning two centuries.