With maple syrup season in full swing and pancake breakfasts offering buckwheat pancakes, it seems appropriate to share this lyrical description of a common farm cover crop from early fall in 1926.
The fields are white now with what J.C. Galloway writes about in The Port Allegany Argus and Reporter: "A tiny triangular box of black or gray, filled with a cake of white powder; What a wonder box of magic it is!
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| from our buckwheat seed stash |
"A bare plowed field in early summer; a few bushels of the wonder boxes scattered over it, a rain, and in a few weeks the fields are covered with white snow. Go closer, and one sees shining glassy stems standing thickly, dressed with leaves, and at the top, rows and rows of little waxen palaces filled with honey, fragrant and sweet and heavy; honey for the bees and honey for the farmer who plowed the ground and gave them their chance to grow.A little later, and the shining stems and the tops are heavy with the wonder boxes again, twenty or fifty, or a hundred to one; enough to work the same magic another year, and a great deal over which to bless the world. Well done, little buckwheat.”
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| Buckwheat growing as Metzger Heritage Farm Summer of 2009 |
