140 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



while for cooking fresh, home-grown foods whose 

 delicate flavors would be assassinated by a Spanish 

 brew it is a splendid seasoning. 



In the same season we eat poke sprouts. The 

 poke is an annual bush that under favorable con- 

 ditions attains a height and spread of eight or 

 ten feet. It bears small purple berries that are held 

 to be poisonous in this vicinity, although Kephart 

 says it is not the berry but the root that is deadly. 

 When the young plant sprouts are a foot high, or 

 less, they are cut just above ground and cooked 

 like asparagus, for which they are a substitute so 

 satisfactory that the poke has been exported and 

 domesticated in France. 



Later in the year, usually in early August, we 

 enjoy prime blackberries in such profusion that 

 we never domesticate them; and of course before 

 them there are wild strawberries for anyone who 

 has a solid working day to devote to picking a tea- 

 cup full. With the first hint of cool weather the 

 mushrooms make their appearance; given the right 

 weather they will be with us until close to Thanks- 

 giving. No one who has once tasted a wild mush- 

 room will willingly go back to the cultivated kind; 

 the flavor of the wild variety is such as to create 

 an illusion that the domestic has no taste at all. 



It is said that only a scant few of the fungi are 

 deadly poison. When I was in college I ate some 

 pretty fearful looking things that my room-mate's 



