Hope everyone gets to stick your hands in some good dirt this weekend.  See you tomorrow at market or next week right here!

I didn’t post the second photo I’d promised yesterday.  Such is the way of things when old farm friends, setting off on a new farming venture of their own, pass through town.

Yesterday was a day for new friends as well!  It was our real pleasure to host the first in a series of Local Foods workshops organized by the Virginia Cooperative Extension for farmers and other artisanal food producers.  We gave a tour of the farm, spoke some about how we ended up at Frog Bottom, and talked about the CSA model which is working so well for us here.  Other speakers talked about assessing risks, assets, and market demand.

It was really a lovely morning.  Farmers can be busy folk, sometimes too much so, and one of the best things about yesterday was meeting some of our neighbors for the first time.  It’s good to know good people!

Future workshops will look at issues of liability and food safety (Thursday 9/24) and different marketing and distribution models (Thursday 10/29).  Learn more or sign up by contacting Scott Baker at the Bedford County Extension Office: 540-586-7675 or scbaker@vt.edu

One more farm photo coming later today!

Richmonders, do you know the little slice of heaven that is Jimer’s Frozen Custard, just a half hour southwest of y’all on 360/Hull Street Road?

As a once-upon-a-time Pennsylvania gal who spent many a summer down the Jersey shore, I can say with considerable authority that this stuff is the real deal!  It’s rich and creamy and cold and delicious.  There’s no better treat at day’s end, after a hot and sticky afternoon delivering vegetables, than a chocolate/vanilla twist on a wafer cone — particularly if you’re seven months pregnant, particularly if the humidity finally breaks as you sit at the picnic table slurping at the cone, particularly if Jim the owner has time to come out and chat with you about mountains and road trips and good neighbors.

So wonderful.  Click here for directions.  Coming from Richmond, it’s in a gas station parking lot on your right, just after the turn-off for Chesterfield Berry Farm, and just under a half mile before the Chesterfield Berry Farm Market.

Hie thee!

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I was in Richmond all day yesterday and didn’t post a photo.  So check back for a second Daily Farm Photo later today!

I do not, as a matter of course, talk about our flock!  We’re vegetable farmers, after all.  Around here you’ll see a gaggle of greens, a bevy of beets, a passel of potatoes.  That’s it!  We grow things without legs.

Well, okay — we’re completely hooked on chickens for eggs and laughs.  And we like raising meat chickens, just enough for our own freezers.  And we love to daydream about a family dairy animal — but that’s a lot of milk!  And the winter is coming!  And the baby is coming!  And we like to take vacation sometimes!

As farmers, it’s good to be practical.

But sometimes, you gotta go with your gut.  So: please join me in welcoming the newest member of our little farm family.  She doesn’t have a name yet.  She’s a Nubian/Pygmy cross who was intended for our freezer (and that is where the little fellows who came with her ended up).  But instead Ali is outside building a milking stand and I am inside searching for a gal pal for her and we are all grinning and rubbing our bellies, looking forward to lots of tasty milk.

It started out like any other Monday — squash pick, chicken feeding.  Then some onion trimming, as you see above.  Then the day turned wild.  Stay tuned.

When we heard news of the late blight that swept much of New England and the mid-Atlantic this summer, our hearts just about fell out of our chests for the farmers up there.  Late blight is a fungus that destroys tomato plants and can also spread to potatoes; it spread like wildfire in the Northeast this summer.  It’s awful to imagine a summer without tomatoes.  And tomatoes are quite often a vegetable farmer’s bread and butter — a summer without tomato income is a very, very scary thing.

Luckily, Virginia seems to have been mainly spared, and we’ve got some gorgeous ones for you in the CSA and at market right now.  I always say you should eat tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow.  Nothing tastes like a vine-ripened tomato in the thick of summer, and their season comes but once a year.  This year, I’m eating them with an extra grateful heart.

We’re growing eight kinds of tomatoes at Frog Bottom this year, a mix of heirloom and home garden hybrid varieties.  All are thin-skinned and delicious.  I really am hard-pressed to pick a favorite — but if I must, I’ll always reach for a Cherokee Purple first.  That’s the purple one I’m touching in the photo above.  Let it ripen as long as you can stand it (at room temperature — never in the fridge), till it’s a deep dusky purpley-pink.  It’s amazingly sweet but with a nice balanced acidity.  It’s a natural for slicing and eating as is or in a sandwich.

Stop by the farm any day at lunchtime and you’ll likely find Ali and me both with sticky tomato juice running down our forearms and a bit of a homemade mayonnaise mustache.  Can you think of a better way to celebrate the season?

Here are our favorite ways to eat tomatoes right now; all require pretty minimal preparation and let the natural intensity of the tomato shine through.

Sliced and doused with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper. When we want to gild the lily we add basil leaves and fresh mozzarella.

Sliced and stuffed into a simple sandwich of toast slathered with homemade mayo. We haven’t bought mayo in ages.  It’s fast and easy to make your own, and once you start, you’ll wonder who kept this secret from you your whole life.  To make your own mayo: Blend one room temperature egg, some dried or jarred mustard, the juice of one lemon or a roughly equivalent amount of vinegar, and a bit of salt in the blender or food processor for a minute or two.  Then add oil (we usually mix equal parts olive and canola, but experiment to see what you like) — usually about 3/4 cup — in a very slow stream while still blending, until everything is emulsified.  Our mayo tends to be thinner than storebought, but you can add more oil if you’d like it thicker — or a bit of water or milk or cream if you want it thinner.  You can also stir in more lemon juice, mustard, salt, or pepper at the end to taste if you want.  Put whatever you don’t use right away into a tightly sealed jar in the fridge and use within a week.

Coarsely chopped and roasted in the oven with olive oil and salt for an hour or two or three. It can be hard to turn on the oven these days, but we’re always glad we did.  Slow roasted tomatoes are like candy.  Toss them with pasta, add them to a salad, smear them on toast with goat cheese, or just stand there at the stove and eat them all right out of the roasting dish.  Roasted tomatoes freeze very well.

Tomato bread salad. Tear or slice some chewy, slightly stale bread into rough 1-inch chunks, toss with olive oil, and bake until crispy.  Toss with halved garlic cloves, chunks of tomato, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and some basil or other fresh herbs.  Let the whole thing sit for about ten minutes and then dig in.  Avoid the garlic cloves.  Or not.  We first started making it when we read about it several years ago on Molly Wizenberg’s food blog Orangette.  We can’t recommend this website heartily enough for its wonderful storytelling and its no-nonsense, always-delicious recipes.

Panzanella. Tomato bread salad’s slightly fancier cousin — a bread salad that originated in central Italy.  Here are two delicious versions, one at Kitchen Parade and one at Chocolate & Zucchini.

And if you can’t eat  your way through all the tomatoes: freeze ‘em!  They’re slightly more accommodating when you use them later, if you blanch, peel, and coarsely chop them first.  But when we don’t have time for that we throw them into Ziploc bags whole.  Then we use them in sauces and casseroles in the winter.

And what about y’all??  Please leave a comment and tell us how you eat your tomatoes!

“Nah, really, I’m good here.  Carry on with what you were doing.”

Seriously!  I mean, mainly because of the delicious eggs, but also because of the serious goofiness factor they’ll bring to your days.

(even young chicks about to enter their awkward weeks)

Remember those new chicks?  They’re two and a half weeks old now, and hoo boy, have they grown!  They’ve still got downy foreheads and backs, but their wingtips have real feathers on them, and they’ve lost much of the down on their bellies.  Anyone who wants to is welcome to come say hello to these boys and learn more about how they grow.  Just give us a call and set up a time!

Here at Frog Bottom, we irrigate from a springfed creek.  We couldn’t offer consistent or high quality vegetables year after year without irrigation.  It’s also a steady source of headaches brainteasers all season long: Where did this leak come from?  Why can’t we get steady pressure from this hydrant?  Are we out of hose clamps again?  And has anyone seen the nut driver?

So we like to keep people of good cheer around.  If you’ve visited us at market or at the farm, you’ll agree we’re pretty darn lucky.

The planting of the fall and winter veggies continues!  Amazing to think that these little bursts of purple and green will turn into gorgeous earthy crimson globes.  Delicious ones.  I invite everyone who loves beets to tell us why — leave a comment here!  And I will consider it my mission for the fall to convince the rest of you that you love beets too.