Orange County Essay Contest - Max 250 words
"My Favorite Place in Orange County."
By Cheetah Haysom
(Published in Middletown Herald Record - 2003)

Pine Island

  Pine Island is heaven for imaginative food lovers. But it's deadly for those on diet.
This rural farming hamlet in Orange County is a year-long sensory evocation of scrumptious delights.

  The trouble starts early in spring when farmers have tilled the fields, turning the dark chocolate -colored soil that is peculiar to the region into vast smooth pans of fudge brownie dough-- rich, thick, and mouth watering to behold. If there are spring snowfalls, what fills your eyes and drops your jaw as you drive beside the farm fields is acres of sinful chocolate cake, perfectly sprinkled with confectioner's sugar.

  In May, the thins rows of saplings planted in that rich black dirt turn tender green: we are Lilliputians in the middle of a vast mint crisp candy bar. As the greens grow, the soil is visible only as brown specks; the landscape becomes mint gelato with chocolate chips!

  Once a vast swamp dotted with "upland" islands, the area was gradually drained by waves of Europeans who settled the region, building their houses and churches on the uplands, and planting onions in the lakes of organic soil. In the 1950's this region of Orange County became one of the most productive onion growing area in the United States. But in the last two decades market factors have forced many of the farmers - men and women still loyal to the backbreaking labor their ancestors invested in the black dirt farms - to try alternative crops, including lettuce and varieties of organic and exotic greens that supply green markets and upscale restaurants. In summer many of the 41,000 acres of black dirt in this fertile region become a vast salad bowl.
Summer is also the season when the families of Polish descent - the predominant immigrants of the region - celebrate their heritage with Polka festivals and kielbasi sausage. Indeed, the closest thing to gourmet in Pine Island is found behind the doors of the unpretentious Quaker Creek store on Pulaski Highway where the Culinary Institute of America-trained charcuterer makes sausages that even New York City customers hunger for.

  But there is nothing pretentious about Pine Island. Even Ye Jolly Onion Inn, the family-run eatery that draws customers from counties around, is simple and hearty. This restaurant celebrates the history of the hamlet, as well as the crop that still gives Pine Island its identity. The local onions are the pungent, strong tasting, heart-healthy breed - the kind beloved of people who cook. They are perfect for the pot.

  During the fall harvest, Pine Island's sensory joys turn from the visual to the olfactory: trucks spill their sunset colored bounty along the roads, where they are crushed by passing cars, filling the air with the aroma of freshly chopped onion. After the first freeze, the aroma bursts from these roadside wastrels. If you open your car windows you are submerged in French Onion Soup, so rich you swim in the smell of it. Right through January the onion aroma in my neighborhood suggests stews and hearty casseroles. OK, the children might close the windows and moan about "onion air". But eventually their appreciation of the fields of fudge brownies and mint crisps and chocolate cake matures to include Pine Island's invocation of summer salads and winter stews.
Those of us who live in Pine Island are blessed with a harvest - reaped only with appreciation of the soil and imagination. If we seem in a rush sometimes its because something in the air or landscape has suggested its time to get home and start cooking. For those who love the idea of food, Pine Island is a kind of Nirvana.