Recipe day: what to do with all those cherry tomatoes

I've had my second year in a row with a bumper crop of Sunburst cherry tomatoes. I was amused the other day walking through our local grocery chain when I saw this display:

10.5 ounces of conventionally grown tomatoes for $3.49 seemed like a good deal until I looked back and realized that so far this summer I've harvested over 10 pounds of these tomatoes from two plants (not including the ones we pick and eat while working outside). And my tomatoes have zero food miles and are grown organically.

Cherry tomatoes are often very prolific, but who REALLY needs 10+ pounds of cherry tomatoes over just a few summer weeks? There are only so many salads one can eat, only so many tomatoes the neighbors will take, and even though the chickens love to eat them, it seems like such a waste to feed them to the birds.

My friend Molly gave me a wonderful tip last summer on how to dry and save these tiny, sweet tomatoes. I tried it last year and liked it so much I knew I needed to share this secret. Whether you grow your own or you get too many cherry tomatoes from your CSA, this is a wonderful way to stretch the joy of the harvest out into the winter without too much trouble.

You can use these tomatoes in the same way you would use any sundried tomatoes. We especially like them on pizza or tossed with pasta, olive oil, and shredded parmesan. I've also thrown them in stir fried vegetables for an added sweet and tangy flavor.

How to do it:

• Lightly grease a baking dish
• Pre-heat oven to 250F
• Chop tomatoes in half and arrange them skin side down
• Bake for 2 hours (I check them about half way through)
• The tomatoes are done with they have mostly dried out
• When finished cooking, allow the baking dish to cool completely
• Place baking dish in the freezer for a few hours until the tomatoes are frozen
• Using a spatula, pick up tomatoes and store them in a baggie or other freezer-safe container
• The frozen tomatoes should last until the next summer

Tomatoes ready for the oven.

Dried out and ready to freeze. Like berries, freezing these separately on a tray keeps them from sticking together and makes them easier to use.

Oven-dried cherry tomatoes will be delicious in a fast weekday meal or on my Super Bowl pizza this winter!

In other news!

The little rain garden that I planted early in the summer has attracted Monarch butterflies, and we now have caterpillars. I am very excited about this urban farm update!

Have a great week everyone!

The good, the bad, and the really darn ugly

Since returning on Sunday from a camping trip, I have been very busy this week harvesting, mowing, weeding, and cleaning up plots. As I start to take out the old summer veggies and plant the fall lettuce, spinach, and cabbage, I'm taking a good look at how everything has gone so far this season.

I gorge myself on salads all spring. About the time I am ready for salads again, fall is here I can plant them to my heart's stomach's content.

I'm still tallying up total pounds of vegetables and fruits produced, but this is my photo evaluation of things that are going well and some things that are just plain ugly.

First the ugly:

The tomatoes aren't picturesque as they once were. After a couple of strong thunderstorms, all of the tomatoes and tomatillos are lying sideways. The chickens are enjoying eating the ones that fall on the ground (luckily not too many), and tomatoes on the ground are also easy targets for hungry prairie voles. But nonetheless, the tomatoes are producing very well.

The bad (also really ugly):

The popcorn was almost completely devoured (most likely) by raccoons. But better them eat the corn than the chickens!

The potted butternut squash that stayed very small and hasn't produced a single fruit convinced me that I need to learn more about growing plants in containers.

And because I like to end on a happy note... the good:

In our case the chicken came before the egg. This is the Buff Orpington hen who's egg is pictured below. And as of yesterday there is a second chicken laying eggs!

Egg #1 (It was delicious!) These first eggs are tiny, but experienced urban chicken ranchers have told me that they will get larger over time as the hens mature.

I canned Bloody Mary Mix for this first time. Since I have so much pasta sauce, I decided to divert some tomatoes into brunch.

I've noticed a dramatic increase in pollinators with the addition of the teeny tiny rain garden. I am very pleased!

The urban farm as a system

Urban farm goals: surplus of healthy food, enjoyable levels of labor, rich soil to maintain high yields, a neighbor-pleasing space that is supported by the community.

Permaculture: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems (Merriam-Webster).

Over the winter I took a short intro course at my local community college on permaculture and came away with many ideas and goals on making the urban farm into a system that could support itself, both in terms of lower levels of physical labor and fewer outside inputs. Someday I'd love to take a full length permaculture course, but for now we're starting small with a few ideas and projects that will hopefully lead to setting up a whole system.

Chickens

This chick doesn't know it, but she's very important to the health of the urban farm.

This spring we spent too much money buying compost. This was mostly due to the big farm expansion and not having enough of my own compost to fill the new raised beds. In the future I'm hoping to be able to use urban farm-made compost, thus saving money and the hassle of having it delivered and dumped in a big pile on the driveway.

Our chickens are going to be a big part of this system. Not only will the hens provide a delicious protein source for us with their eggs, their waste is probably even more valuable. Chicken manure, when composted, is nitrogen rich "black gold" that will feed all of our vegetables. Also, we can take our bags of grass clippings, weeds, and even dinner scraps and give them to our hens, keeping these "waste" products within our system and turning them into something useful. This will not only make the chickens healthier, happier animals, it will reduce the amount of feed we need to purchase.

I have two bins: this one and something similar given to me second hand.

Rain garden

A nice example of a rain garden.

Bees are all over the news this spring, and for good reason-- most of the fruits and vegetables we eat need insect pollination to produce fruits or seeds. One way to attract pollinators is to plant native species close to the vegetables or fruits that need pollination. This summer we are installing a rain garden in a drainage area that remains wet much of the year. The rain garden will be close to the raised beds, so the bees will have plenty to pollinate, which will increase our food surplus.

This natural area in our urban farm will be dual purpose, since it also will hold water on our land instead of allowing it to flow down the hill and into the street (and then directly into our local lake, Lake Mendota). Also, it will be beautiful and will attract butterflies, birds, and humans.

The more we can re-purpose materials, items, and areas on our urban farm, the more resources we can save, making the farm that much more valuable!