The Off Gurney Hill Gift Guide
Still haven't found just the right sickle for that special someone?
Apparently I miss having a full-time job, because for the first in the history of this newsletter I took it upon myself to do a little service journalism and wrote this gift guide. Now that On Gurney Hill is more like Off Gurney Hill, the Editorial We (me) can think about the spectrum of gardening and cooking more in terms of lifestyle writing (non-derogatory), and that comes with stuff — good, cool, fun stuff! Stuff that, for the most part, I actually own and use and love.
The parameters I gave myself for this list is that everything needed to have some tangential relationship to plants. So you’ll find everything from gardening and kitchen tools to seeds and various plant-based products. Nothing sponsored, but purveyors of fine Japanese garden tool get at me.
Okatsune Thinning Shears ($13)
The only problem, if you could call it that, with Japanese garden tools is that they are expensive — sometimes very, very expensive. But as they are both incredibly sharp and beautiful to look at, I am a total sucker for them. These little shears, perfect for cutting flowers and light trimming, are the ideal gateway: they aren’t pricey, and they work so much better than some throwaway pair of garden shears from the hardware store. If you get them as a gift, just know that you’re setting up whoever you buy them for to spend more and more on other snips and secateurs and sickles down the road.
I’m in the Alton Brown camp when it comes to kitchen equipment and gadgets: if an item has only one highly specialized use, there’s no point in buying it. I’m not giving up drawer space for an avocado pitter or an egg separator or anything like that! This ceramic donabe is the exception, because it turns out you absolutely do need a rice-only pot if you want really perfect, fluffy rice. (I’m sure a lot of you have Zojirushis, but I don’t have the counter or cabinet space for one.) It’s truly a before-and-after kitchen item for me; I don’t know how I cooked rice for so many years without it. For the full Rice Factory experience, give a five-pound bag of freshly milled rice along with it.
Indigenous Heirloom Beans
This isn’t so much a specific gift than it is an idea: give someone seeds for the indigenous bean variety from wherever they live. For nearly everywhere in the United States (and much of North America) there’s at least one if not many types of bean that are uniquely adapted to the local climate thanks to hundreds of not thousands of years of cultivation and selection by Native American tribes. (Not all tribes farmed, hence there not being a bean for absolutely everywhere in the country.) There are a number to choose from in Maine, mostly bush bean varieties, which have a shorter season than pole beans. But I like the charm and drama of long vines, so I’ve been growing Norridgewock beans for the past few years, an Abenaki variety from the area around the central Maine town of the same name. I’ve never harvested as much as I’d like to (enough for a winter’s worth of soups) but the few meals I make each year with the maroon-and-white mottled beans is always one of my favorites.
To find your bean, look to local seed providers that specialize in regional varieties: Fedco does a decent job in the northeast (and pays indigenous royalties on all native seed varieties), Native Seeds/SEARCH in the Southwest, Great Lakes Staple Seeds in the Midwest, and Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center for the South.
Palestinian Olive Oil Soap (from $4)
I found out about this olive oil soap from Nablus, a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, via an Instagram ad, so shoutout to my impeccable algorithm. There’s been a soap industry in Nablus since the 10th century, and the history shows: It’s wonderful soap, and it has a nice sort of non-scent scent from the oil (there’s no added fragrance). But what’s most fascinating to me is how it’s made: unlike modern soap that’s made with lye (“this is a chemical burn,” Tyler Durden says, grabbing your wrist), Nablus soap uses soda ash from a local saltwort species saponification. Commonly known as barrilla, the stuff is basically a weed today (and is sometimes farmed as a vegetable similar to sea beans), but historically the plant was hugely important because soda ash was used not only for soap, but also making glass too; Murano glassmakers apparently preferred the stuff from Palestine. Plants, man.
Sagebrush and Snakeweek Perfume ($34)
In my experience, there are two kinds of scent memories — the very general, and the almost exactingly specific. So while the smell of chaparral plants like various sages remind me of Southern California writ large, sagebrush brings to mind one particular place: the top of Ernest Debs Park in Los Angeles, where I regularly walked my dogs during the years I lived just down the hill. Walking up the backside of the park — accessed by a secret trail that runs off of one of LA’s magical “paper streets” that are in fact just endless stairways and public sidewalks crisscrossing the hills — leads to the most impressive hedge of sagebrush I’ve ever seen. It must be 20 feet long and a good five feet wide, and in the winter, when the feathery foliage gets all lush and silvery-green with the rain, it smells like heaven. This perfume, made from wild sagebrush and snakeweed harvested from the New Mexico desert in fairly convincingly sustainable ways, smells like that massive hedge; I love it.
Dahlia Tubers
I have never actually paid for any dahlia tubers, which can cost anywhere from $6 to $10 a pop, as tempting as I find them to be. Still, I do have a big ziplock bag of tubers tucked away in my fridge for next spring, a stash that started with a handful of tubers my neighbor Pam gave me a few years back. That’s the great thing about growing a few dahlias: it make growing even more the following year a fairly simple prospect. This is, I think, why a lot of dahlia gardeners are such obsessives, and why dahlia tubers make such a wonderful gift. Give a little bag this year, maybe of these fairy tale-like Tsuki Yori No Shisha variety, and they will likely become an oversupply of tubers in the years to come. Hell, you might even get a few back down the road to plan in your own garden.
I don’t have this exact sickle, but I have one that’s very similar to it. Two summers ago, in a moment of stupidity, I looked away from my hands while I was cutting down a cover crop with that sickle, and sliced off the top of my right pointer finger. A bunch of stitches and a lot of careful sickle-cutting later, I still heartily recommend buying one. But the trick, as I learned the hard way, is not only to keep your eye on the sickle, but to trust the blade do the cutting — it’ll be very sharp — instead of really swinging it.
Skeppshult Cast-Iron Spice Mill ($60)
I bought (err, expensed) one of these spice grinders more than a decade ago, and today it essentially still looks brand-new despite routine use. Hefty, attractive, and good at its job, it’s just the kind of kitchen tool I prefer: one that will last and last. If you buy directly from the Swedish forge that makes them, the grinders are backed with a 25-year guarantee.
Baba Suishaba Cedar Incense ($11)
This incense is as close as you can get to burning a cedar log in your house simply because it smells good: it’s made from nothing but Japanese cedar leaves and bit of leaves from a local bay species (which acts as a binder), all processed in a mill powered by a century-old water wheel. I found the smell a bit unnerving at first because its so much like being close to a burning fire, but now that I’m used to it (I bought a box in October and burning at least a stick a day since then I need to buy another) I’m totally hooked on its wonderful, subtle scent.
I am never going to buy a shitty plastic seed-starting tray ever again now that I own a soil block maker, and I could not be happier about that. This simple tool helps compress wet potting soil into dense cubes that can hold their shape well enough to be moved around — particularly after a seedling begins to thread its roots through the dirt. Eventually I’ll get it together and build some wooden flats to hold my soil blocks, and my seed-starting setup will essentially be plastic-free, which is the way it should be.
Haws Classic Watering Pitcher ($33)
For the last few years I’ve managed to grow and make one, maybe two really nice dried flower bouquets each summer. In theory, they last for a year before the colors really start to fade, but I am loathe to throw them away, so my collection just keeps growing. And that means every summer I need to find a new vase for the new bouquet. While this enameled pitcher could be used for watering plants, I think it’d look perfect filled with a big bunch of dried flowers.
Brant & Cochran Dirigo Belt Axe ($239)
Just a perfect axe. And while I don’t own one myself I once reported a story on the company (which I was paid for but the piece never ran??) that left me certain they are worth every penny.
This apparently will not be the year I string dozens of hachiya persimmons in my windows to slowly dry in the sun, a project I am dying to do. (If you have a hachiya tree and want to trade something with me for a box full, hmu.) But this adorable illustrated guide from the great Sonoko Sakai shows exactly how to make hoshigaki for anyone who can readily get their hands on some persimmons.
Thank you for such thoughtful and unique gift suggestions.
Take care and enjoy the holiday season!