Gather & Reap

COVER photography: Elizabeth Hannah Studios featuring foraged and preserved ingredients from page 18. Pottery and styling by Gravesco Pottery.

Our property happens to sit on the highest point in Marion County, overlooking a holler that flows with Fishback Creek and peppered with any tree you can imagine. This time of year is glorious with the golden yellow leaves, the burning bush reds and oftentimes the sunset colors of our maple trees. Every year I learn more about our property and how to gather what it offers us to preserve for the coming months and into the spring.

We harvest our rose petals and hibiscus flowers to make tea, our sherbet-colored zinnias for their seeds, our sunfl owers to eat some seeds now and replant the rest in the spring. Sometimes we get lost in the day-to-day and forget about what our land gives to us. This issue, themed “Gather and Reap,” is about taking the time to gather what the summer has given to us so we can reap the rewards during the cold months and into the spring. It is about creating a cycle of sustainability and taking in the possibilities and bounty Mother Nature can provide. Compiling this issue has brought a tremendous amount of learning about Indiana ingredients right at our fi ngertips, learning about the reinvention of our restaurant community and about the next generation of farming.

Sit with us a while and perhaps make yourself a cup of hibiscus and rose petal tea.

Hoosier Hugs, 
Jennifer Rubenstein, 
Editor in Chief 

From the Editor

Fall may be my favorite season. It’s when the forest is at its best—especially up north, where I am now. I love the earthy smells, the invigorating fresh air. The autumnal colors are such a natural moment of Zen. Even when fallen, the leaves provide comfort as they cushion walkers’ feet on forest trails. And it smells of mushrooms so strongly that I fi nd myself scouring the forest fl oor in search of edible fungi treasures.

But while others emerge from the same woods with baskets full of wild edibles, I often end up with nothing but a case of forager envy. It makes for moments of proud happiness when I do find that beautiful bolete or manage to get to the sumac bush in time, before others have clipped off all the crimson-red clusters. I am learning, every day.

In Texas, where I used to live, fall holds a different promise. The worst of the suffocating summer heat is gone and ahead stretches a season full of colorful bounty: citrus galore, sweet ripe persimmons, local pecans shaken fresh off the tree and shelled on site. Skies are brilliant blue, days are sunny and warm and nights are balmy and inviting for al fresco dining. What is your fall like?

Warmest, 
Francine Spiering, 
Managing Editor