What’s been going on!

It’s Tomato Week!  Three big tomato centric events this week and near the peak of our harvest.  First up Thursday is our farm dinner at Foster’s Market in Chapel Hill, this year with Flo and Portia from Chapel Hill Creamery, the menu looks great (can you say caprese salad?) and there may still be some spots left but you better call today.

Second on Saturday is the big annual Tomato Day at the Carrboro Farmer’s Market with over 70 varieties to try, a raffle and several dishes to sample including an heirloom tomato gazpacho made by Seth Kingsbury from Pazzo Restaurant from our tomatoes.  Betsy usually dreams up something for us to sample too, maybe a Green Cherokee tomato juice?

Lastly on Sunday is a fun, tasty and educational afternoon at our Heirloom Tomato cooking class at A Southern Season.  This is the fifth year we have worked with Craig LeHoullier, known as NC Tomato Man and the person who introduced Cherokee Purple to the world and personally keeps over 1400 varieties of tomatoes in his collection.  We talk about the different kinds of tomatoes, growing them and of course cooking and eating them.  Still spaces left but hurry.

The rains seem to not want to stop and our thoughts go out to all of our farmer friends who are having increasing problems from too much water.  More flooding for farms in the mountains to diseases and fruit splitting getting worse with every damp day.  This is one of those seasons that you just grit your teeth and work through.  You should savor every tomato that you can this summer and be glad that you don’t grow them for a living.

Picture of the Week

Beautiful Lisianthus

What’s going to be at the market?

The lack of sun is the limiting factor in the flower department but this is what we should have.  It is the peak of the queen of cut flowers, Lisianthus, maybe one of the best looking crops we have had in years, tall with thick stems and lots of colors.  It is still Lilypalooza, lots of long lasting fragrant pink Oriental Lilies and yellow and pink Asiatics too.  Brilliant Zinnias.  Beautiful Bouquets of course.

Maybe the peak of our season?  Plenty of reds with both the sweeter Ultra Sweet and more balanced Big Beefs.  A good amount of Cherokee Purples.  Smaller but fair quantities of of most of the other colors- yellow with Orange Blossom and Kellogg’s Breakfast and the higher acid Azoychka, German Johnson pinks, bi-color Striped Germans, Green Cherokee too.   A good mix of sauce tomatoes with both the Italian Oxhearts and beautiful Romas.  Fair amount of Sungolds, Blushes and SunMix cherries.

Cucumbers.  Sweet Red Onions and the Long Red of Tropea Italian cooking onion.  Basil for the tomatoes!  The first of the pepper crop with Shishitos, Padrons and Serranos this week.

As a reminder if there is anything that you would like for us to hold for you at market just let us know by e-mail, by the evening before, and we will be glad to put it aside for you.

Hope to see you all at the market!

Alex and Betsy

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