April in Helvetia

April in Helvetia (continued)

Beans and cornbread, one of the most common meals in these parts, also shows how food is a window on Helvetia’s way of life. It is one of those perfect combinations of foods, comforting and nourishing, created from necessity by frugal people. When larders were spare, there was always cornmeal, beans and a little ham. The first time I sampled the combination was at the hilltop farm where Eleanor Mailloux’s sister Margie Daetwyler, 74, lives with her daughter Nancy Gain, son–in–law Leroy and the Gain’s children.

That day Margie had set her beautiful old kitchen table with woven red place mats and shallow soup bowls patterned with fading flowers. There was a big old crockery bowl of beans cooked with bits of pork, a platter of fried ham, and a basket of corn muffins. Several small glass bowls held Margie’s pickled beets and homemade cottage cheese, and Leroy’s spicy pickled cabbage which was sublime on the beans. Dessert was canned homegrown peaches and pears. It was as well executed a meal as I have ever had.

Margie’s memory is as acute as that of the MacNeil sisters. She talked that day about the wild spring greens she and her family used to collect — wild mustard, poke, dandelion, nettle, sheep’s sorrel, lamb’s tongue, and blackberry and violet leaves. She spoke of the sausages her husband Norman made at hog butchering time, and his extraordinary recipe for hogs–head mincemeat.

Later, I visited Nancy and Leroy’s house next door. I was astonished at the scores of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and herbs they harvest, can, freeze, or dry — a measure of Helvetian industry and self–sufficiency as well as the valley’s plentitude. They also raise pigs, cows, and chickens; make cheese, butter and sausages; hunt wild turkey, deer, grouse.

Some of the younger people in Helvetia recognize beauty of the community’s way of life, and are actively trying to record the old ways and preserve local traditions. Nancy has been learning needlework techniques, such as tatting and quilting, and has been collecting old recipes. She makes an astonishing jelly out of the wild violets that grow in the field behind her house, which she picks with her young sons in the spring. Eleanor Mailloux’s daughter Kathy has become chef at The Hutte, where she lovingly prepares authentic Helvetia–Swiss food. Alvin Burky, 33, a fourth generation descendent of the original settlers, makes butter and cheese by hand on his mother Hazel’s farm, which he manages.

Still, I worry sometimes that this way of life, so suffused with memory, will all disappear when people like Eleanor and Irene and Mary are no longer around. Every year, I make the long trek from New York to this Appalachian town that I still find rare and mysterious, and where I have always had the feeling of being home. I continue to record stories and recipes, as though trying to fix on paper what is so deeply imprinted on my heart.