Eliza Henry-jones: A Day in the Country Each month we hear from a different rural writer

INSPIRED BY HER LATE GRANDMOTHER, ELIZA HENRY-JONES LEARNS THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO MAKE MARMALADE.

MY GRANDMOTHER LOVED MARMALADE, but it wasn’t until after she died that I finally started to make it. She had Alzheimer’s and, growing up, I shared a house with her. She moved things, broke things, hid things. She didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know that she was home. Our house always felt raw and jagged, nothing stayed in its place. Marmalade was something rare and steady; it came from before, from when she was whole and with us. I remember it beaded, sticky, on my fingers. I remember the smell of it, served alongside black tea. Our citrus orchard was already established when we moved to our farm. Lisbon lemons, blood oranges, navel oranges, mandarins, grapefruits, and cumquats. Every morning, I put my baby in his carrier and we walk to the top of orchard, with views of rolling hills and fog. We share an icy cold mandarin while the horses and goats watch, their breath misting. It’s marmalade making season, so today I pick blood oranges and lemons and lug a basket of them back down to the house. In the years after we lost my grandmother, making marmalade felt suddenly vital. My initial attempts were cloudy and watery, even with added pectin. The recipes I used were sourced impatiently from the internet, always the quickest ones I could find. I was trying to find my way back to something I couldn’t properly remember but desperately wanted to. Again and again, I made the goopy, dull mess and wondered what I was doing wrong. I’d think about my grandmother, about how she ate marmalade on white toast with scalding black tea. I continued to make terrible marmalade until I asked a wise friend how she made her own wonderful preserves. She said that she made them slowly. These days, I always make marmalade the long way — the slow way. I make it from the fruit in our orchard and it tastes the way I dreamily remember from early childhood, before my grandmother became sick. At the same time, this marmalade is an entirely new beast, made from fruit that we have grown and harvested ourselves. We share every cold night and sunny day with the orchard. When we taste food — any food — that we have grown, we taste our own place in the world, our own history and story. I now know Stephanie Alexander’s marmalade recipe by heart. Making marmalade this way is a lengthy process, but one I enjoy. The slowness of it has a quiet sort of rhythm, which is particularly charming on cold days, with the fire roaring in the next room and the kitchen windows fogging over. Time is precious, but so is the food we’ve grown and what it can remind us of. It is worth taking the time to preserve it into something lovely. My baby and I listen to podcasts about gardening, food and folktales. He sucks on rinds and watches as I juice, dice and boil the lemons and blood oranges. We both end up sticky. I rummage in the cupboard for jars that need to be cleaned before the marmalade is finished and then I leave the saucepan, the jars and sugar to sit in the kitchen until tomorrow. He’ll eat marmalade one day and I wonder whether he’ll love it or hate it. I wonder whether he’ll inexplicably think of hot black tea. Perhaps he will think only of our orchard and what it’s like in the rain and frost, the sunshine and wind. Of what the weather here might taste like, preserved in jars that look like jewels. Eliza Henry-jones is a novelist who lives on a small farm in Victoria’s Yarra Valley. Visit elizahenryjones.com