LAKE MACBRIDE— Earlier this week the first tomatoes were harvested from our garden. Two types of cherries which were sliced up and placed on a dinner salad. Few things are as good as a fresh tomato.
There are some 32 tomato plants in our garden and we hope there will be an abundant harvest. One never knows with the tomato blight, the uncertain weather, and bugs. We don’t spray anything on our tomatoes, and take what they will produce— less deductions for certain conditions. It has been enough.
First tomatoes are another benchmark along the year’s progress. Later this year than previously, but just as delicious.
LAKE MACBRIDE— There is a lot of spinach in the garden. The trick is to harvest it before the sun gets high in the sky. I got a bushel this morning, and it is washed and drying between terry cloth towels.
In the space left from radishes, I planted bell pepper seedlings, clearing a tray out of the bedroom (finally). One tomato plant in the slicer patch had died, so I replaced it. The rest are looking good. Just one or two more rows of tomatoes to plant and then the growing. Outside work broke up my gardening morning.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Politicians glom on to veterans like there is no tomorrow. Veterans vote, we live in society, and most of us served and left the military behind without comment or regret. Politicians should work to reduce the number of veterans we are creating as a society, rather than glomming onto our service for political reasons. That could be their service, and the nation would be grateful.
The newspaper work is finished for today. The focus will be on home work. The atmosphere is calm, so the brush pile can be burned, preparing a space for planting garlic tomorrow or next week. There are lots of apples for processing into applesauce, apple crisp and maybe some dehydrated apples. That is, once the dried herbs in the dehydrator are removed and cleaned. The last of the fresh tomatoes will be turned into a pot of chili for supper. There are more turnip greens for soup stock, and a drawer full of root vegetables in the refrigerator— plus whatever else is harvested today. There is a whole afternoon of kitchen work.
Having gone to town this morning I hope to remain on the property, or within walking distance. Maybe once the brush is burned, I’ll take a walk on the lake trail, but no further. It’s what’s called living, and we don’t do enough of it. And it’s time to get on with it.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Dust is still settling on life made turbulent by the harvest, new work, writing and commitments with friends and family during August. Top that off with talk about retaliation against Syria for using banned chemical weapons, and summer is ending with a bang, perhaps literally. It’s time to regroup and deal with the challenges.
A neighbor and I did a deal on raspberries yesterday. He provided eight pints to process, half into a spread for his morning toast, and half into what I want, probably the same, or maybe pancake syrup. After a shift at the farm this morning, raspberries, tomatoes and apples will all enter the canning mix. It’s now or never for the ones already picked. An eight hour canning session begins at 1 p.m. and I’ll locate my second canning pot to process two batches at a time. Times like this, I wish we had six or eight burners on our stove.
The garden has been on its own for three or four days. Tomatoes are ready, and not sure what else. When I return from the farm, I’ll empty the compost bucket and find out, picking tomatoes for sure, and likely Anaheim peppers.
There is a lot more to organize, and the food work is in the must-do, nature-can’t-wait category. There’s more work, my presentations on climate change Sept. 17 and 29, particularly. That’s not to mention finding replacement revenue for when the seasonal farm work ends soon. It looks to be a very busy autumn as we enter September.
LAKE MACBRIDE— As my portfolio of local food system work builds, there is not enough time to do everything that is needed for optimum results. Apples fall faster than they can be processed, and tomatoes sit on the vine, ripe and ready. The work commitments fill in time at five locations, and that leaves less flexibility in a schedule that used to be pretty open.
I just finished canning 36 quarts and 14 pints of tomatoes as juice, sauce and whole. The sauce is very expensive in that it takes a lot of tomato flesh to make a pint of the thick sauce. Hopefully it will enable me to make pasta and pizza sauce without reducing or adding tomato paste as a thickener. From last year’s first experiment it was a winner and worth it.
I was counting on a lot of slicers from the CSA, but there was blight and the production hasn’t been as good as in previous years. Luckily, I have plenty in our garden, at least for the moment.
When I come up for air, there will be other stuff to do. For now, swimming in all this work is invigorating and fulfilling.
LAKE MACBRIDE— There are six crates of organic farm tomato seconds in various states in our kitchen. Today’s goal is to process them all and have quarts of tomato juice and pints of plain sauce canned and ready before bedtime. I spent about an hour washing tomatoes last night after dinner, and have been at it since 6 a.m. this morning. The tomato deal is an important part of this local food system.
Here’s the deal. A CSA produces tomatoes for farm shares, and has seconds, which are not suitable for the customers. I get a call when there are some, pick them up, along with canning jars, process and can them into a few categories of food ingredient. No salt, vinegar or preservatives, with the end result being jars of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce or tomato juice. The juice is the strained liquid left in the cooking vessels, and not tomatoes run through a hand or motor powered juicer. The farmer labor is producing the tomatoes, mine is processing them. We split the finished product 50-50.
So far, it is looking to be successful. Check back when the tomatoes really start coming in.
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