Both my father and my father-in-law were eager to taste new potatoes in early summer. If you have a good crop of potatoes, you can afford to harvest a few new potatoes even though they are small. There will be plenty of other potatoes left in the ground to mature and grow big. If the garden is producing just right there can be some fresh peas to harvest as well. Creamed peas and new potatoes was a kind of luxury meal for both of these men who came of age during the Great Depression. I didn’t really understand their passion for new potatoes until once, when I was visiting with my father-in-law he told me of a time when he was caring for the family’s turkey farm while his parents were away. He said that he had potatoes for every meal during that time and he described how he would sort through the potatoes in the root cellar to find the ones that weren’t too sprouted and that hadn’t gone soft. through his story, the image of having the end of last year’s potatoes and the anticipation of new potatoes made sense to me.

Many cultures have early harvest festivals. In addition to the celebrations held at the end of harvest that focused on thanksgiving for the bounty of nature, early harvest festivals celebrate the first cutting of hay, the harvest of early berries, and other late spring and early summer activities. Early harvest festivals often are combines with solstice observances. Especially in northern locations, the long days encourage a wide variety of activities and celebrations.

Food figures big in many of our celebrations. Special table settings, adorned with flowers, are common. Perhaps the abundance of food at solstice celebrations is a nod to the simple fact that in earlier times there were shortages of food in the early summer. Early summer is a long time away from the previous fall’s harvest and food shortages were common.

These days, we don’t really pay much attention to eating in tune with the seasons. Our diet doesn’t vary much around the calendar. Our pantry is stocked with similar foods year round. There are, however, some seasonal variations in or diet. We tend to barbecue more during the summer than during the winter. Part of the reason is that it gets dark early in the winter and looking outdoors in the dark just isn’t the same as cooking on the barbecue during the summer.

Watermelon is still a seasonal food around here. It is available in the stores from mid June through the summer and we associate it with July 4 picnics and other outdoor feasts.

There are, however, so many foods that are available year round in our system of stores filled with produce that has traveled a lot of miles. Avocados and tomatoes from Mexico are on the shelves in the supermarket year round. Oranges and apples can be purchased any day of the year. We have become so used to being able to access food year round that we have forgotten the simple pleasure of seasonal flavors and eating in touch with the cycles of the year.

When we got married, the choice of the date was made in part with regard to the school year. We were both students and getting married during the summer break made sense in terms of our schedules. We were eager to get married and so early summer made sense to us. I don’t remember thinking consciously about the solstice when choosing the date. There were a few jokes about our choice to get married on the shortest night of the year. However, we are not farmers and we have lived our lives a bit separated from the natural cycles of food production, planting and harvest. We have lived in northern locations where winter is a significant season and where previous generations didn’t havre access to fresh produce during much of the year. We have, however, lost that sense of connection between what we eat and the changing of seasons.

Yesterday we picked the first cherries from our cherry tree. The juicy fruit promise a bountiful yield. It has only been a month or so since we finished the last of the cherries in the freezer from last summer’s harvest. We have to balance the pricing of our cherries with the birds who come to harvest the fruit. If we wait too long, the birds will eat the cherries before we get them. We also had the first strawberry from our plant, but we don’t have many plants. Over at the farm, the children know that they can harvest strawberries to their hearts’ content. The strawberries lining the path to the back door are covered with bright red fruit. I’m a bit like the children and can’t resist bending down to sample a few whenever I’m over at the farm. The farm has helped me to regain a sense of seasonal food and the cycles of the year. We have a few garden crops including peas, lettuce, carrots and tomatoes. The season is a bit earlier here than it was in South Dakota. We already have tomatoes on our plants, though they are not yet ripe. I’m eager for the first tomatoes from our own plants. Fresh ripe garden tomatoes have a flavor that is far better than anything you can purchase in the store.

This year, however, our summer solstice celebrations are marked by another kind of abundant harvest. We have a refrigerator and a freezer that are full of leftovers from our family gathering last weekend. We over shopped and over prepared for every meal. The good news is that we hosted a large gathering and we never ran short of food at any meal. The bad news is that we have a lot of leftovers that need to be carefully stored and eaten. Tacos, sloppy Joes, hamburgers and hot dogs are available for any meal we want them. And we have a lot of ice cream and cake in our freezer. We definitely are not experiencing any food shortages around here this year. Perhaps it is an opportunity to pay attention to the cycles of our lives and the seasons of the year as we purchase groceries and stock our pantry going forward. We don’t however, have any potatoes in the round at our house. New potatoes in early summer is a delicacy that seems to belong to a previous generation. The memory and the story, however, remain.