Rhubarb Madness

In mid July I decided I had to harvest Rhubarb.Not much later in the summer, the rhubarb would be too old and starchy to eat.

Its an activity with bittersweet memories for me. For years I picked rhubarb for my ex boyfriend's mother. Rhubarb was one of her favourite foods.I loved nothing more than surprising her with a black bag full of stalks. I would spend hours cutting it up for her into bits, ready for freezing. The first time I arrived with a bag full of stalks she looked at me with astonishment "Oh THANK YOU. How did you KNOW." I'd had no idea rhubarb then was so dear to her. Over the winter she'd delight in taking out a bag and making crumble, sorbet, jam and juice.

I hadn't picked any since my ex's breakup in 2013.
Determined I would do it, this time for ME, I set off with a trug and a knife.

The final haul. Hand for scale

Sitting ready on the freezer

The Rhubarb in Heylor is spread over a few plants in odd locations.
The main Rhubarb patch is at the back of my grandad's house, in a grassy park.

As all the patches do, they seems to thrive on neglect, producing huge stalks year in, year out. As plants and weeds in my neglected granny's garden gets wilder and wilder, it gets more difficult to get to it. After struggling over fences, overgrown gates and through nearly waist high grass, I got to the rhubarb.

There's something deeply satisfying about hauling out rhubarb stalks from the plant base, cutting off the huge (poisonous) leaf and plunking the stalks into a bucket. Listening for the thunk on a quiet summer night with the lapwings pleeping over the hill behind you.

It was a beautiful summer night. Despite the midgies biting, I got a bit trigger happy and took back upwards of 50 stalks. I wish I'd taken pictures! If I remember right, my phone's battery was almost dead.

Borrowing the use my grandad's kitchen, I washed every stalk (removing the odd slug and creepy crawley that had been evicted from its home) and cut up every stalk into cooking ready chunks.

The process took 2 and half hours. By 10:30pm I had 3 bags of 4-5 pounds of rhubarb ready for freezing. Rhubarb is difficult to cut. You have to rotate the stalk as you cut into it. Otherwise long stringy strands peel the length of the stalks, mislooking it. My hands ached.

We're nearly into September and I still haven't yet cooked any of it! I've irritated my partner as I've taken up a good 50% of our tiny freezer with a single bag. I need to get on with it, but I feel like crumble deserves a good stormy winters day before it'll be really appreciated. I'm sure the storms will come soon to set me cooking.

Heylor summer nights