Tales, Sagas, Stories we can glean from our vegetables ...

It’s that time of year for a bowl of hearty, thick, golden soup .. full of the harvest– the beans, the maize, the squash and the tomato .. rich steaming delicious mouth watering aromas reaching us from the simmering pot on the stove.

The indelible “Three Sisters” - the vegetables so revered by the native American Indians, that make up their three main native crops - which we now recognise in our culture, as well as in our agriculture as companion plants.

The strong maize stems provide a structure for the beans to climb up, while the beans give up nitrogen to the soil, and the squash spreads along the ground – the leaves acting as a ‘living mulch’, creating a micro-climate to retain moisture, while the prickly hairs of the vine deter pests. These three sisters’ gardens often include the ‘fourth sister’ – the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (Cleome), which attracts bees to help in pollination.

Illustration depicting both male and female flowers of maize

There is a ‘Three Sister Tomato’ plant, so named because it grows fruits of three different shapes: a Roma, a pleated and flattened globe type. Heirloom tomatoes of all cultivars are making a return to the seed farms and have wonderful evocative descriptive names: Brandywine, Chocolate Stripes, Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, Yellow Pear, Summer Cider, Violet Jasper ... we can see them, we can smell them and we can dream of those dishes enhanced with the heady mixture of fresh or baked tomato.

A variety of specific cultivars, including Brandywine (biggest red), Black Krim (lower left) and Green Zebra (top right).

The stories that could be told through their names, while the sagas of how we came to use them today and how these heirlooms are being brought back to life through the legends of, and puzzles from the past.

We know about ‘Pozole’ a ritually significant, traditional pre-Columbian Mexican corn soup or stew from the writings of Bernardino de Sahagun’s “General History of the Things of New Spain”, (c 1500), the “Florentine Codex”.

A bowl of traditional Pozole in Cuernavaca, Mexico.



Bernardino de Sahagun (1499 – 1590), a Spanish Franciscan missionary to the Aztec (Nahua) people of Mexico, is regarded by scholars as being one of the “fathers of ethnography” and creator of the first encyclopaedia of the new world. His ‘Historia General’ is an unparalleled work in the local Nahuatil language, completed in 1569.

The ‘Historia’ consisted of twelve books, a grammar and a dictionary of Nahuatl: the Florentine Codex as it is more commonly known ... as you would imagine it is one of the richest surviving sources of information on Aztec life before the Spanish Conquest. The Codex found its way to Italy by 1588 and there it remains in the ‘Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana’ in Florence.

Page 51 of Book IX from the Florentine Codex. The text is in Nahuatl.

Having deviated a little to tell you about the accomplishments of Bernadino de Sahagun in his recording of the Aztec’s history perhaps it’s time to get back to the bean, corn, squash and tomato heirlooms that we have today, or are being ‘re-established’.

Squash, in all its glory is a vegetable of middle America, Mesoamerica, first cultivated some 8,000 – 10,000 years ago – coming in all shapes and sizes, mature or immature fruits. Most parts of the plant can be used – the seeds as are, or being ground into a paste, ‘nut’ butter, oil or even a fine flour; the shoots, leaves and tendrils can be eaten as greens, while the blossoms, long used by the native Americans, are now to befound in the kitchens of today.

Gourds ... the name given to the hollow, dried shell of a type of pumpkin squash normally have a more utilitarian use than for food – following on the tradition of our ancestors. However gourds were one of the earliest plant species domesticated by humans and were originally used by people as containers or vessels, even before the advent of clay or stone pottery, sometimes being referred to as “nature’s pottery”.

Various squashes such as Turban, Sweet Dumpling, Carnival, Gold Acorn, Delicata, Buttercup and Golden Nugget.

A Turban Squash.

An interesting point re pollination – day-blooming gourds are pollinated in the same way as squash requiring bees, while night blooming gourds are pollinated by moths – which are normally present unless drawn off by night lights in the area.

Beans, beans and more beans – there are over 4,000 cultivars of beans grown in the States – with the common green (vine) bean being cultivated in the Americas for at least six thousand years. Most of the fresh beans that we eat today were brought across to Europe after Columbus sailed the Ocean waves.

Broad beans reached us via another ancient route – they were gathered from the wild in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills, grown in Thailand since the early 7th millennium BC (predating ceramics); deposited with the dead in Ancient Egypt, but not until the 2nd millennium BC did cultivated, large seeded broad beans appear in the Aegean, Iberian and southern European regions. A passing mention of beans and chickpeas cast on the threshing floor appears in the Iliad (late 8th C).

The Tepary Bean

The cultivar ‘Tepary’ bean was known to the pre-Columbian native peoples, as it is especially valuable for its drought-resistant properties and can be grown in desert and semi-desert conditions. It has recently been introduced to African agriculture, in the countries with low annual rainfall.

And last but not least we return to that Mexican staple, the corn cob, lauded by the pre-Columbian peoples, reflected in their culture – as shown here in the Larco Museum, Lima, Peru: one of the world’s largest collections of pre-Columbian art.

Gold Maize: Moche Culture 300 AD,held in Larco Museum

The “Legend of the Bloody Butcher Corn” gives us the story of this blood red cob from its humble beginnings two hundred years ago, to the realisation of its value in today’s age. The full story can be read via the link ... but this seed tells a family story: a tale of a girl and her wolf dog.

Betsey, half white and half Pottawatomie Indian, was captured by the Native Indians around the 1800s, and while she waited to escape – she befriended her captors and learnt from them. On escaping she brought with her the bloody butcher seed and the beginnings of its recent history: the story is wonderful, featuring characters with the name of ‘Bandy Bill’, ‘Delilah Deal’ taking us to the roots of our earthy base as the Bloody Corn releases its family story.

Exotic varieties of maize are collected to add genetic diversity when selectively breeding new domestic strains.

These sisters of the vegetable world, these early domesticated plants, provide a wonderful creative field for us to draw on – characters, names, realisation of our roots – both from the earth and our ancestral travels – and perhaps as importantly today as yesterday ... sustain us at all times of the year .. with their beauty, their taste and tales from the past.

A weekend lunch or supper dish full of nourishing heirloom earthy vegetables, with a fresh loaf or two of crusty bread, some freshly churned butter, a selection of cheeses with a bowl of fruit to finish – a glass of wine, a golden cider or a tankard of beer ... it must be the time to make a pot- au-feu – a flavoursome satisfying broth to warm the soul and to share with family and friends.

Dear Mr Postman – we are in a quiet period .. and I just spend time quietly with my mother ... she knows I’m with her. It's a blustery wet old day!

Hilary Melton-Butcher
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