As winter fades and spring slowly creeps in and the acequias began to fill with parciantes cleaning out communal ditches so that fields can be flooded, the wild asparagus get ready to send their fresh shoots. For me, the joys and bounties of spring in northern NM can be found in the favors in a single stalk of wild asparagus. A shoot from plants with roots that that have been around for longer than I have have so much life and flavor you can never really appreciate conventional asparagus again. The flavor signals so much to come.
When I think on feeding myself, and others, in the most optimal ways, I think on how my ancestors might have ate. The answer always includes a little of 'what was available', which is a little obvious but nonetheless an helpful insight. What is a little less obvious is how, Mother Earth provides what we need, when we need it. Asparagus after a dormant winter to help cleanse, fruit in the summer to give energy, rose fruit in the fall for immunity, so on and so forth. I wonder if the asparagus would taste the same in the winter.
It's hard to not want to capture every moment and to hold on to it for as long as possible. I always get sad when the wild plums drop their fragrant sweet masa smelling blossoms to begin making leaves and then fruit when I had passed my opportunity to be able to 'preserve' them somehow, but so it goes. The blossoms mean nothing if they last forever. They reward those who are present, for only a brief movement.
As I walk through our fields, giving the dry ground a needed drink of water from our acequia full of water diverted from the river that a few miles north that came from a spring and of snow melt, to grow grass that will collect sunlight and minerals that will nurture our cows and sheep that will in turn nurture us. My skin is seca and muscles are sore as I check my asparagus patches to collect a shoot or two and eat them then and there as I walk to the next lindero.
