We had a great growing season this year and what will be remembered most will be A LOT OF TOMATOES. We grew 250 feet of tomatoes this year including several new varieties, and the jury is in — Lucky Tiger tomatoes are the new community favorite. Technically a cherry tomato, it is a long bicolor greenish pink tomato with darker green furrowed stripes. With a bright and sweet flavor, we heard you loved them, and we did too, for fresh eating on salads and sandwiches. We made plenty of sauce with them too, though. That said, our favorite sauce tomato this year is a classic paste tomato that is world famous for making beautiful, hearty sauces. Pomodoro San Marzano you made our hearts sing and our mouths water. Slow to get started, our San Marzano plants outperformed in all ways, and kept the harvests going deep into October. We grew candy again with our orange Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, and are finally smart enough to plant them at the end of the garden, for quick access to snacking. We feel guilty not mentioning our other beautiful varieties that included Japanese Black Trifele, Celebrity, Green Zebra, and our determinate variety Glacier. We are super slow with our clean up this year, having removed stakes and cleaned plants out of only about half our patch so far. With the first true deep frosts only set to happen this week, we’ve enjoyed walking out to our tomato wasteland, and scavenging for just a few tomatoes, livening up our salads so deep into the calendar year. It is a joy, and a true privilege to eat food so fresh, to let it ripen on the vine, and very meaningful to us to have donated hundreds of pounds of our tomatoes to the Bethesda Mission and St. Francis of Assisi’s food pantry, especially in this year of great challenges with the ongoing Covid-19 global pandemic. We know they’re just tomatoes, but we hope they fed and nourished our family, friends, and community.

We are thrilled to be working on our farm projects with two different consulting groups this year:

Rodale Institute and their Organic Crop Consultants, have helped us gain the technical knowledge and confidence to move forward with our transition plan to become USDA Certified Organic. Rodale Institute is not just helping us understand the soil science, and possible crop rotations, they are also helping us form relationships with other organic farmers and landowners in our state. Their guidance is invaluable.

We are also working with the Kitchen Table Consultants on developing a sustainable business plan for the future of the whole farm. After winning a Farm Vitality grant with the PA Department of Agriculture, we are working with KTC to focus on the sustained livelihood of our farm as we transition ownership from one generation to the next. KTC’s consultants have the enthusiasm, experience, financial acumen, and resources to help us become better business owners and managers, and help us thrive in our newest chapter, and we are so grateful to have them on our team.