Learning to love tomatoes

(CSA Newsletter: Week 26)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Tomatoes — The very first of this year’s tomato crop! These are called ‘stupice,’ and they are a new variety for us this year. They are an open-pollinated heirloom, which means that we’ll be able to save the seed. In fact, this year we’re not growing any hybrid tomatoes, because we haven’t found that they’re significantly more productive or tastier than the open-pollinated varieties we’ve grown. We’ll keep you informed on what kind of tomato you’re eating each week, and we’d love feedback from you on flavor!
• Basil — Can’t have tomatoes without basil!
• Cabbage — It’s big. It’s round. It’s green and delicious. It’s a giant summer cabbage! Make cole slaw, cabbage and noodles, fried cabbage, sauerkraut — or all of the above!
• Chard — Huge bunches! Great for lasagna!
• Lettuce — This lettuce is a ‘summer crisp head,’ which is our fancy, flavorful, nutritious version of iceberg. It has a great crunchy texture and is well suited to cool creamy dressing (including that perennial favorite: Ranch!).
• White salad turnips — More of the delicious, refreshing salad turnips! Once again, a reminder: they make a great snack on a warm afternoon — slice and eat with your favorite dip.
• Carrots — Eat ‘em. Yum.
• Summer squash — Enough summer squash for everyone this week. After overloading everyone with summer squash and zucchini the last two summers, we scaled back our plantings this year. We hope that the more moderate amounts prove to be welcome.
• Sweet onion — Chop and serve on salads; add to cole slaw; put onion rings on sandwiches; sauté with summer squash; grill rings for burger; yum, yum, yum!

When I was growing up, my parents and I moved several times as my dad finished medical school, started residency, and then eventually found a permanent position in anesthesia. Even though my mom loves to garden, it wasn’t until I was in middle school that we were in one place long enough (and had time enough) to even think about having a garden of our own.

Unfortunately, we settled in a place with a healthy local deer population, which put a constant dent (or should I say “bite”) in my mom’s ornamental garden beds. The roses were under constant attack, despite being protected by coyote urine, net bags of Irish Spring soap, and a clicky-sounding ‘deer scare’ noise maker. My mom persevered and eventually discovered every beautiful flower that deer don’t eat and planted those with great success.

But through it all, my dad’s one crop always flourished — the tomatoes growing in wooden planter boxes on our south-facing deck, which was a very warm location and well out of the deer’s reach.

At the time, I wasn’t a big tomato fan, so I can’t say I fully appreciated eating the beautiful deep red beefsteak tomatoes my parents ate all August from these boxes. But I did know that they looked incredibly different from the tomatoes my parents bought at the store the rest of the year. They would eat them differently too — rather than just adding them to salads or sandwiches, these tomatoes would be sliced and served on a plate with just salt and pepper (and maybe a little olive oil or cheese). And, then this very simple dish was eaten with gusto.

I always watched them enjoy these tomatoes with some envy. Yes, they were beautiful, and they sure seemed to be tasty to others. But, I myself couldn’t bring myself to even like tomatoes, let alone love them. Sure, I enjoyed tomatoes cooked in sauces, but never raw — and, certainly never completely on their own. The texture was slimy, and the flavor was too acidic for me.

Many years later, when I started working on a farm, I made a concerted effort to try to like tomatoes. My co-workers gushed and fought over these small orange cherry tomatoes called ‘Sun Golds.’ Again, I’d try one dutifully and chew and swallow without much love in my heart. Usually, I’d let others eat my share, but I’d continue to try one every now and then.

Then, in 2006, when Casey and I started our own farm, I finally learned to love tomatoes.

I’m not sure what made the difference that year … perhaps it was the experience of looking through the seed catalogs with Casey that spring and picking out the many kinds of tomatoes we wanted to grow (several red slicers, two kinds of cherry tomatoes, and lots of heirlooms) … or, perhaps it was a result of lovingly tending them all early summer: carefully pruning and training on twine … or, perhaps it was because it was the hottest summer on record and the tomatoes were especially good that year … or, perhaps I’d just tried them enough to finally “get it.”

Yes, the texture is kind of slimy and the flavor on the acidic side. But, there is also a deep savory tone to tomatoes that is so perfectly balanced by sweetness. A good, ripe tomato, dressed as my parents used to do with salt and pepper, is a completely outstanding food experience.

Now, when it’s tomato season, I’m first in line to pick and eat Sun Gold cherry tomatoes fresh off the vine. And, my favorite August lunch is sourdough bread spread with goat cheese and topped with tomatoes.

I still don’t love tomatoes enough to eat them out-of-season. Or, perhaps I love them too much to eat store bought tomatoes. I prefer to wait and save myself for the good stuff — the tomatoes that only come when it’s warm and sunny.

Tomatoes continue to be a high maintenance crop for us here at Oakhill Organics. Even though we generally get plenty of hot weather in the Willamette Valley, we’re still a marginal climate for reliable tomato production. You may know this from your own garden, where one summer you might end up with a bumper crop of tomatoes and the next year you’re pulling them in green to try and ripen inside during October.

We grow our tomatoes in an open-ended plastic-covered hoophouse. To maximize our yields from this expensive covered space, we grow tomatoes vertically — we prune them to one main stem and carefully ‘train’ them up onto twine. Right now, our tomato plants are taller than we are and covered with green and ripening fruits. We’ll pick tomatoes for the CSA from now through October. We’re always refining our tomato system — what varieties we grow, how we water, how we train — which is a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.

We’re not unique in our approach to tomato growing. Many other farmers and gardeners put the same amount of effort into this one crop. And, why do we do it? To be honest, in our case, tomatoes aren’t exceptionally profitable. In fact, I’m not sure that after all the time we put in, they’re very profitable at all (especially compared to some of our other staple crops like carrots and summer squash).

But, growing tomatoes is a labor of love. There is something beguiling about those dark red (or sometimes pink or orange-yellow) fruits hanging off of lush green vines. It’s no wonder the pilgrims associated the tomato with the devil — it is sinfully alluring.

My younger self would certainly be baffled (or perhaps pleased) that I now consider tomatoes worthy of so much work and attention, but clearly I’ve been won over. Odds are that you have too. Even Rusty has already shown a love for tomatoes.

However, I know that there are quite a few people out there who are still like I once was: a little icked out by tomatoes’ texture and flavor. If you are one of those people, I’d like to invite you to try tomatoes again. Maybe try a bite once a week or once a month this summer. You don’t have to like it. Maybe you never will. But I’m telling you: if you learn to love summer tomatoes, you’re in for a treat.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Our annual CSA Potluck is coming up, on Saturday, August 21. Watch for more details in next week’s newsletter. We hope you’ll join us for this fun community event!