*rainbow cherry tomatoes, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have

Greens: baby lettuce, endive, pea shoots, green cabbage, mini caraflex cabbage, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, rainbow chard
Roots: red beets, yellow beets, carrots, new red potatoes, yellow potatoes
Alliums: fresh onion bunches, fresh garlic, scallions, garlic scapes
Fruiting Crops: slicing cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, green beans, yellow summer squash, green zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes
Herbs and Miscellaneous: basil, parsley, fennel, rhubarb, celery

We listed several items available for bulk purchasing at wholesale pricing on the “bulk” section of the online platform. (If you look to the left of the screen when you are on the store page, it should have an option to click on bulk items.) This week we have heirloom tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, garlic scapes, onions, cabbage, basil, green beans, zucchini, and summer squash available in bulk amounts if you do any preserving for winter. If you pick up at the barn and want to order any of those items in bulk, just send us an email.

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag to Ludlow or Rutland

*rainbow grape tomatoes , photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

This week we get the incredible luxury of taking a week off as a family to head to the beach, so our already incredible team will be holding it all down entirely while we are away. They rock.

We got all the garlic harvested and spread out to cure in the propagation house. Every year when we do this, I am tickled that this space has so many functions for us: starting seedlings in the spring, summer and fall, curing garlic, onions, and shallots in the summer, establishing strawberry plants in the summer, ripening the last tomatoes in the fall, and nursery-ing some hardy perennials in the winter. We love stacking functions.

Meanwhile, it’s definitely tomato season around here, and because we grow a wide variety of delicious tomatoes, I thought it could be fun to learn a bit about each of them. The two pictures below are the slicing tomatoes that we grow. The second photo is of the same tomatoes stem side down:

Top row from left to right: Sart Roloise, Marmalade, GinFiz, Mai Tai, Hot Streak
Bottom row from left to right: Darkstar, Damsel, Marbonne, Granadero, Beefsteak

We love all of these for some reason or another, by virtue of continuing to grow these specific varieties year after year, so they all fall under our category of our “favorites.” We choose varieties based on flavor, but as production farmers, we also choose varieties based yield, resistance to disease, and growing mostly nicely shaped and not-too-weird looking tomatoes. This excludes some otherwise delicious ones we might grow if we were home gardening. But these varieties all have a great flavor and texture, so here they are:

Sart Roloise is sweet, fruity, some hints of saltiness, with a low to medium acidity. It slices wonderfully, and has a lovely juicy, smooth texture.

Marmalade was bred from the Sunkist variety if you are familiar with that. They are sweet, tangy, low acid, delicious, firm, juicy, and not too watery.

GinFiz has hints of tropical fruit, and is juicy and sweet. It’s an excellent gateway tomato for people who don’t think they like tomatoes. (This was me for so many years!!) Low acid and great texture.

Mai Tai is sweet and tangy, similar to GinFiz with some subtler tropical flavors. It’s rich, melts in your mouth, and has a thin skin, also a great introduction to tomatoes for folks who don’t think they like them.

Hot Streak is a meaty tomato with a delicious “traditional” flavor of what you imagine tomatoes tasted like in your great grandparents’ garden. It’s delicious, sweet, firm, and juicy.

Darkstar is sweet, tangy, rich, full, and the word elegant often comes to mind when I use this one. It’s a deeper, more complex flavor, and pretty juicy.

Damsel is a sweet, rich, and tangy juicy fruit with a similar flavor to Pruden’s Purple and Brandywine. It has a lovely texture and slices well.

Marbonne is bred from the French heirloom Manmande, and has a full, smooth, sweet, bold flavor and wonderful texture.

Grenadero is the roma variety we grow. It has exceptional flavor, sweet, full, and similar to the popular San Marzano. It cuts beautifully, and I use it on a sandwich when I want a drier sandwich, maybe packing a picnic lunch, and I don’t want it soggy in a couple hours. It’s dryness makes it ideal for sauces and salsas, but unless I am making a tomato paste, I usually blend it with some heirlooms in a sauce so the sauce comes out juicier.

Beefsteak is popular for it’s traditional appearance, but this particular variety also tastes great. It is firm with a robust, meaty, deep tomato flavor.

We harvested over 1000 pounds of these beauties just last week, and anticipate a similar haul this week. We are in the height of tomato season, y’all… These delicious fruits that we start the seeds for in the darkness of early February, keep from freezing through the spring, delicately transplant in April, barely keep up with trellising and pruning through now, and feast on for a couple months, before ripping them out to grow some winter greens before we start it all again. Despite not really liking tomatoes until about a decade ago, now I sometimes feel the rhythms and hum of vegetable production as they relate to where we are in the tomato cycle. And now is definitely my favorite time of that cycle, because now is caprese salads, BBLTs (that stands for Bacon Basil Lettuce Tomato, as our kids love to call them), bruschetta, Pico De Gallo, fresh marinara, shakshuka, tomato tarts (see recipe below), marinated Greek tomato and cucumber salads with feta, Panzanella salads, a daily tomato basil mozzarella sandwich, blistered cherry tomato pasta, gazpacho, margarita pizza, and all the other things you can dream of with fresh tomatoes.

Have a great week!

-ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, Galen, Taylor, K2, Miguel, Katie, Vanessa, Evan, Bryan, and Cindy (and Sky and Soraya)

Weekly Recipe

This week I made the recipe below with a variation of some caramelized onions, fennel, and garlic on top of the cheese layer, and it was delicious!

French Tomato Pie