Blighted

Well, the organic farm has thrown in the towel with the tomatoes this year.

When I went yesterday, I was told that sauce and cherry tomatoes were now "gleaning" crops, meaning I could help myself to as many usable ones as I could find. Quality was poor because they'd been hit by late blight.

Boy, had they ever. Under a gray, drippy sky I wandered the rows of dessicated plants sporting rotted out fruit that somehow still clung to the vine, although it dropped off the second you touched it, splotching the ground beneath it. The few baby tomatoes somehow still managing to sprout don't stand a chance.

Someone told me that this is the same strain of blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840's. We still haven't figured out what causes it or what to do about it. And walking the fields yesterday, I could get a very, very tiny measure of what it must have been like to go out to your farm in the morning and see your previously healthy plants reduced to this. Very disheartening.

Still, there is a bit of a silver lining. At least tomatoes can be eaten underripe, unlike potatoes. Circumstances like this tend to make you think differently about how you use your produce. Serendipitously, the New York Times ran a recipe yesterday for Green Tomato Soup. Keeping that in mind, I pulled some good-sized green tomatoes off the vines so I can give it a try. The weather's turned rainy and chilly very suddenly out here, perfect weather for soup. I know you can also can and fry green tomatoes, but what else? Any suggestions? I'm wide open to them!