Harvest Time

In most of the villages and towns and even in some of the larger cities in Macedonia, the people are preparing their winter stock of food, just as they have done for centuries. It’s a social time when neighbors get together and roast their peppers, salt/vinegar their cabbages, cauliflowers, peppers and green tomatoes, make wine and rakija, and split and stack wood. It’s a busy time but everyone seems to enjoy the season.

The market on Wednesdays is now stocked with canning jars and equipment, giant heads of cauliflower, peppers of every shade of red, yellow, orange and green, pickling cucumbers and cabbages that require a forklift to move.

Various varieties of apples, plums, blackberries, apricots, figs, quince, pears and earlier in the summer peaches, melons, cherries, and strawberries are being made into slatko (fruit in a thick syrup) and compote (fruit in juice) for something sweet to eat and drink during the winter months. Chestnuts, almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts are being shelled. Red peppers and eggplants are being made into into ajvar while tomatoes and peppers are being made into pinjur (a paste if thick or a soup if thinned) or are being preserved in oil and spices. Cabbages, cauliflower, green tomatoes and garlics are being preserved in a salt and vinegar solution in large barrels or large plastic containers. Strings of drying red peppers, to be crushed into paprika, are visible on almost every yard and balcony. The root vegetables –potatoes, carrots, beets, onions and garlic are available all winter at the local produce market, so that they are being somewhat ignored at the moment.

Hunters, with their hunting dogs, are industriously procuring their winter rabbit meat. Most of the winter supply of pork, goat, mutton and chicken is still wandering around the barnyards and fields, blissfully unaware of their date with the dinner table, not as a guest but as the main course. They will soon be butchered and the meat salted, smoked or packaged for the freezer.

So temporarily, during this harvest season, the outside air is filled with the aroma of roasting peppers and eggplants and the smoke and smell of burning wood from the outdoor grills and the sound of logs being cut and split. It’s an ambiance that I will miss upon my return to Massachusetts where open fires are prohibited between May and December ( and only between 10AM and 4PM with a permit between January and April on days when it is safe to burn) and where cutting firewood at 7AM or after 5PM would be inconsiderate to my neighbors.