Story for the Day: Pumpkin Spice

Pumpkin is not an acceptable flavouring at anytime.

Jaicobh was the first of the farmers to finish his lot. He left his north field fallow, mulching and rotating did not take long with help from Aiden and Adaoire, the few animals they kept were put in their pens for the winter, and Calleen cleaned the dairy and stocked the larder and reminded Jaicobh that the roof of the byre ought to be fixed during the coming cold months. The brassicas were brought in and the root vegetables were brushed and stacked, and once their stores were filled and everything that had to go to the markets was carried off, Jaicobh and Calleen stood over their fields, an arm around one another’s shoulder, the agrarian monarchs of all they surveyed, and gave a satisfied, “Well. That’s it done now.” A tender osculation was shared, Calleen went to look in on her sons and see whether they needed help with the last of the pumpkins, and Jaicobh went to the square, to take a tally of everyone’s yield and give his blessings for the season as Regent of Tyfferim to all his neighbours and friends.  

                He went on then to the capital, the first of the Tyfferim branch of the family tree to arrive at the keep, and the children came to meet him at the gate, telling him what they had planned for Vyrdin and that he was to keep it a great secret though Uncle Vyrdin probably already knew. They brought him to the Great Hall by way of the gallery, trying for a more clandestine approach, and once they had got their holiday hugs and charmed pineseed toffee from Grandpa Jaicobh’s pockets, they ran off, to collect the rest of the family from their various corners of the keep and corral them in the hall. Jaicobh sat at the end of the table, fatigued and felicitous, satisfied and sore-footed, complacent in his ideas of how well the farming season went, and he gave his accounts of the Tyfferim yield to Alasdair, who was standing beside Boudicca, finnicking over his new jerkin, thinking the measurement not quite right.

                “Carrigh never does it wrong,” he said, smoothing the sides down. “Pastaddams must have done something. It feels a bit stiff just here. Is it too tight in the middle, do you think?”

                “I think you had two tarts this afternoon for tea,” was Boudicca’s assessment.

                “They were two halves, and they were broken with most of the crust cut off, so that is mostly fruit, and you know those would do nothing to my waistline, because I was rushing all over the keep this afternoon,” said Alasdair defensively. “I did not sit down once since morning. I went up and down the stairs to the treasury ten times, walked to the arena and back twice, to give leave to all the senior officers who were going or the holiday, went to the gatehouse to speak to Gaumhin, went to the stables to speak to Roreigh and Dieas, then went all the way to the far field to ask Brigdan about bringing the birds in the mews for the night—Yes, I know I am trying to reason away why I needed to eat two half tarts when I had no reason at all and knew I was going to work myself into a panic about it anyway, but I am king and can do what I like, and no one is allowed to ridicule me for it.”

                “No one needs to when you do it yourself,” said Boudicca. “You will mark there was nothing disparaging in my statement. I only reiterated what I saw you eat for tea.”   

                Boudicca raised her hands in an unassuming posture, and Alasdair pursed his lips.

                “Jaicobh,” said Alasdair, whirling round to him, “do not let your daughter mock me.”

                Jaicobh shrugged and raised his feet onto a nearby stool.  “On yer own there, Majesty. Can’t do nothin’ about her.”

                “This is your fault, you know. I blame you for raising such a derisive daughter.”

                “Aye, she’s my fault. Sure am proud of it too.”

                He winked at her, and as Boudicca came to embrace her father, Alasdair smiled and said in an amiable voice, “Well, I certainly cannot argue with that.”

                “Is it done, father?” Boudicca asked, taking up a seat beside him.

                 “Aye, darlin’. It’s done. The fields are set, the mulch is down,  and the soil’s getting ready for the Slumber. Not much to do for the next while. Just gotta fix the byre and the dry stone wall, some of the heartening is coming out. I’ll have Beryn and Lochan over to take it down and put it up again. Gonna do a row of it between the pens, to keep the pigs from takin’ the hay from the horse. Aye,” with a slow nictation, “should be an easy winter altogether. The twins are doing the last of their gourds, then they’ll be over.”  

                “They left them in the ground this long? Won’t they ruin with the early frost?” Alasdair asked, still fidgeting with his jerkin.

                “Got most of ‘em yesterday. Just left the large ones for today so there’s more room in the jaunty.”

                “You didn’t plant any this year?”

                “We never planted any, even when I was young,” Boudicca replied, with an avid look. “They’re difficult to grow in our soil, and they are hardly worth all the trouble it takes to manage them. I never liked them—any of them, pumpkins, squashes, courgettes—this time of the year, because farmers have taken the trouble of growing them for decoration, everyone is forever trying to make them palatable when there is nothing palatable about them. Squash soup, pumpkin pie, courgette bread—a horror of the culinary trade. Martje will agree with me. She will make a pumpkin pie because the children carve the pumpkins and something ought to be done with the flesh, but we would do better to feed it to the livestock. A scandalous species of crops—what are they? They’re a fictitious fruit masquerading as a vegetable— they’re not sweet, they’re not tart, they’re not even savoury. They taste like someone tried to ferment sawdust and gave up halfway. Pumpkin raw tastes like someone mistook the mulch for food and tried to make a pleasing shape of it. And all the annoyance of scraping out the seeds and scooping out the flesh—they are an insipid monstrosity, the great mistake of the autumn harvest. So much must be added to it to make it desirable as food, spices and sugar—much like Marridon mince. An accident of the season that should have been allowed to die in a bakery fire.”

                “Why anyone would try to make meat into a dessert is beyond me,” said Alasdair. “Then again they do boil cakes and jelly eels.”

                They shared a grimace and shook their heads.

                 “Well, you how know they are,” Jaicobh laughed. “They don’t got flavour up there. With all their machines and innovation, they left out the cookin’. They got that black leading to protect their coal ranges, and all it does it make everythin’ a mess o’ tar. No wonder they have to boil everythin’.”