Wow. What a difference a few degrees make. Last week, every day was sweaty, buggy, and all the other worst descriptions of summer. Even though the constellation Sirius has moved on to other locations on the calendar, we’ve still been getting the full treatment of the dog days of summer. This week, by contrast, September’s arrival has brought with it a definite, recognizable tempering, almost a hint of crispness. Fall isn’t here yet, it says, but it has a message. It’s on its way.
If we have had time to spend strolling about in the outdoors lately, other signs have begun popping up as well. Along creek banks and in the damp understory, beneath their enormous leaves, the rare and delicious fruit of the pawpaw tree is ripening. Black walnuts are beginning to fall, and persimmons are slyly emerging in their delicate finery. Just a few weeks more and the lucky person encountering a grove of them on a foggy morning with the sun just up will swear the very air is aglow with their golden orange glory.
All over the Ozarks, walnut crackers are being dusted off, sorghum cane tested for ripeness, the pans washed and wood cut for the boiler, old recipes will be dug from the back of the box and food mills and colanders washed and made ready for the impending bounty of the harvest. We might even call it inspirational.
This time an important change to our local calendar of events is being surprisingly and pleasantly affected by events in the natural world this particular coming autumn due to unplanned circumstances. Let me explain.
Last year in my home town of West Plains, on the first weekend in June, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Old Time Music Ozarks Heritage Festival. It was great fun, topped off by the iconic band Big Smith, which came out of retirement to help us celebrate.
The road getting there had been long and full of challenges, from rising temperatures and no shelter from the relentless heat to the occasional flooding rains and a couple of near-miss tornadoes.
But last summer we faced another unexpected challenge that made for even more work and less ease of operation.
Two other events that we had always shared the springtime with had ended up happening on this same weekend - one because it was part of a national touring schedule whose dates were determined elsewhere; the other because the carnival venue changed, and that was the only weekend open for the new one. Nobody’s fault, but we all ended up competing for the same vendors and the same crowds. Our weekend had just gotten too darned crowded. So, we began looking for a replacement. The best choice turned out to be quite a distance around the calendar wheel, on the third weekend in October. Well, when we began chewing over that idea, somebody noticed the date put us square in the middle of the fall’s wild harvest. And that might make it possible for us to branch out our experience of Ozarks culture into Ozarks traditional foods and other features endemic to the Old Ozarks.
Well, once started, the ideas just wouldn’t stop. My God, what if we could serve fresh sorghum with homemade biscuits and butter. And persimmon pudding. What if - well, it just went on and on. The question was: Would it work? Would people like it? Would they come? Well, we could give it a try. It would be a risk. What about a trial run? It was a little early, but…
Then one person confessed to having a sizable amount of Pawpaw pulp in the freezer - enough to offer samples and a recipe. Another reckoned they could spare enough frozen persimmons for a bit of pudding - and a recipe. Someone else knew of an old time sorghum mill that had already started cooking. And a local ice cream shop had just today made up a few gallons of black walnut ice cream.
So, we’re doing it. A trial run. A preview. Tomorrow.
Here’s just a brief look at what’s on just one part of the schedule, this part that lists just the part that’s happening outside the entrance to the West Plains Civic Center. They’re going to be hosting a “Living History Encampment” that features demonstrations of blacksmithing, rope making, fire starting, knot tying, river cane fishing poles, flintknapping, pawpaw recipes, persimmon recipes, butter churning, ice cream making, making apple butter, rendering bear fat, corn shucking, yarn carding/weaving/ spinning, honey harvesting and the lives of beekeepers, really! Now how can you get more down home old-time Ozarks Hills than that?
And that’s just the outdoor part! Inside there is music making, workshops of all kinds, storytelling and a host of other fun that you may be too young to remember. It’s all Saturday, from 1 pm to 7 pm in and around the West Plains Civic Center.
Come on down and join us, have some sorghum and biscuits, some pawpaw ice cream or black walnut. Or some peach butter, some persimmon pudding. And take home the recipes. Have some real old-time fun while sampling sweet bits of your own Ozarks history. Hope to see you there.
