Everyone’s talking about tomatoes!

Some have lost them massively to the blight. Others are up at 3 am catching up on the canning.

I feel fairly content with where we are at tomato-wise. I planted about 8 varieties, grown at home from seed. I also allowed certain strong seedlings that self-seeded in the garden, ending up with a few unnamed mixed varieties. We have many beautiful tomatoes, despite the cool summer that slowed production and encouraged disease. But - I planted more tomatoes this year than I have ever before, and have less of a harvest than I have had many years.

This year we have a lot of Caspian Pink. Flavor-wise, it may be my favorite beefsteak type tomato, but it is problematic. It's bottom can start to rot before the top is ripe, and it splits very easily. It's hard to get a perfect one for market purposes.

Usually Costoluto di Genovese is one of my favorite and most prolific tomatoes to grow; this year it did very poorly. It seemed particularly susceptible to the blight or other diseases that did afflict some of my tomatoes - particularly the early planting set out under row covers. In fact, it seems the earlier the tomato was transplanted, the greater the chance of total loss to blight.

Last year, I discovered a new way to use Caspian Pink (and any other soft sweet beefsteak). We are drying them to make tomato chips! These are dried tomatoes with a twist - they end up so thin and crisp and intensely sweet that we just tend to eat them just like that!

The art of canning seems to be going through a revival, but the art of drying food is more seldom mentioned! We love our dehydrator, and are running it round the clock for the tomatoes, zucchini, corn, and herbs right now.

Cherokee Purple I tried for the first time. It’s okay, when I can get a good one off the plants. Tends to split and show blight spots on the top, in my garden.

Other standbys are Polish Linguisa and Opalka - two sausage-y paste tomatoes that look so similar I lose track of which is which. They are huge and fabulous and make great sauce.

Pineapple is a new tomato for me this year, that I haven't grown before. It is a beautiful (and luxuriously tasty!) thing.

Beautiful range of colors in tomatoes cut up for drying! Back to front: Cherokee purple, Pineapple, Caspian Pink, Pineapple.

In addition to the drying, I’ll be canning too, whole tomatoes, sauce, and maybe pizza sauce again.

We sold out of eggs in record time at yesterday’s market. We are so grateful to our clients - who are so happy with the eggs that you come back early and devotedly. We regret having to tell anyone we’ve sold out…. and yet, it is reminding us to consider that it is okay to be “just” a tiny producer.

We think this world would be a healthier place with lots more tiny producers. A small flock of chickens remains naturally healthier with lots of room to move around, with caregivers who know and recognize each one of them individually, with access to good wild food to eat. But there are limitations that come with being a tiny producer…. namely, accepting the ebbs and flows of nature, of normal chicken behaviour, of the effects of declining light, and the realities of the first-come, first-serve, early-bird-gets-the-worm policy! :)

And reality it is. In a sustainable world, there is not an unquestionable endless supply of boxed eggs like at the box store. Sometimes they are there, sometimes they are not. It is part of the lifestyle, the nature of living close to the earth, to celebrate gifts when they are abundant, and accept the seasonality of all things, including the egg.

One of the exciting reasons we have a few fewer eggs is that some of our hens became “setty” this summer, and wanted to stop laying, and brood eggs instead. When possible, we saved eggs with the most desirable qualities from the flock for a couple days and gave them to the broody hen. Three weeks later, this is the lovely result, if all goes well:

five tiny fluffy new home-hatched additions to the flock!

It makes us so happy the way everyone exclaims over our nasturtiums at the market! Nasturtiums get some of the most frequent comments. People have asked a lot about how we get them to flower like that, because theirs don’t. Hmmm… I don’t know that I do anything special. I got my seeds from Fedco, and have been thrilled with the results. They are generous with their seeds amounts, nearly every seed I planted seemed to grow, and they have a nice mix of colors.

Other than that, I started them early in flats, and make sure they’re in good sun when they get planted out. They don’t get a lot of pampering attention otherwise. Perhaps they bloom more because I pick a lot of them.

Nasturtiums are edible flowers. You can add them to salads, or put them on any kind of crudite plate to add color. Some people stuff their centers with a little cream cheese spread. They are really pretty atop a bowl of guacamole. They are a combination of sweet and zippyspicy. Some flowers are spicier than others; some people eat them whole and the stems too; others just eat the petals, and the leaves can go in salad. (I put a few young ones in the bags of “wild baby greens” we sell at the market). I’ve read recipes about pickling the seed pods to use like capers, but haven’t tried it.

We’ve meant to post for awhile about the eggs this summer. The chickens roam through a wooded area all day, eating whatever they find that looks good to them. Eggyolks tend to reflect the chickens’ diets - the yellower they are, the more stuff they are finding to eat containing carotenoids (such as beta carotene).

For awhile, the chickens had found something to eat that was making their yolks astonishingly orange. Not even yellow anymore, but really orange. We think it was probably most likely some red and orange honeysuckle berries. Wild birds love those too. Some chickens tend to forage more than others, which might account for the differences between eggs in the same flock. The eggs in this picture are quite toned down compared to some we were getting for awhile. But they still bear a striking resemblance to the gorgeous delicious “Sunsugar” cherry tomatoes that are coming in finally….

Here are a couple pictures of the eggs at the height of their colorfulness, a couple weeks ago. First, a favorite recipe - homegrown tomato sauce warmed to simmering in a pan, then a few eggs dropped into it to poach. Heavenly spread on crunchy toast, with fresh basil.

And, just regular fried eggs, cooked in cast iron. Lots of range of colors to the yolks. If you’ve ever wondered why “yellow cake” was called yellow cake, this is it! The yellow that we’re all drawn to is supposed to come from healthy eggyolks, not red and yellow dye!

It rained here, finally, two out of the last three nights. It has barely rained here all summer. Storms go north and south of us, but have missed us over and over again.

There has been just as dry a drought on this blog of ours. Like a dry patch of ground, a fierce writer’s block has stalwartly stood between me and journalling - a writer’s block fueled by some difficult events this summer, and a commanding lack of time.

Once you have let something slide, the hardest part perhaps is picking it up again for the first time in awhile. We’re starting small…..tiny raindrops….. but more is on the way.

The gardens are, of course, full of critters.  There’s thems we tire of (the moles, the slugs), and thems we can’t get enough of.  Here are three of them from our recent camera rolls.

Sleeping cat buried in weeds.

A mantis in the tomatoes

A 3 inch garden spider on its web above the strawberries.

Tis August, and I’ve not posted since the first market day.  We’ve gone every week save one, and sold eggs, herbs (dill, basil, tarragon, parsley, cilantro), lettuces of several types, mixed greens of several types (like our Dragonwood Wild Mix), arugula, lamb’s quarters, purslane, garlic, leeks, turnips (ok, so no one has bought any turnips yet, but they look great), cut flowers (every week’s different, of course), nasturium bouquets (either for looking or for eating — about half our customers just want them to look pretty), edible flower mix (nasturtiums, lemon marigolds and arugula flowers last week), and oh I’m sure there’s a few things I’m missing on the list.  Our tomatoes and many other late summer regulars are only just coming in here, so the list will get longer by the end of the season.

The market has been a lot of fun!  We’ve got friendly regular customers that come back for more eggs (and even bring us cartons), or for garlic, or just to stop by and say hello and check us out.  We’ve got helpful neighbors to help tie our rickety sun canopy down when it gets too windy (every week), and a great crew at Zingermans running things smoothly (thanks Corinna and Kristen especially).  I just wanted to write and say ‘Hey!’ to anybody who stops by here, and make sure to come out to the Westside Farmer’s Market soon.