We had a great turn out for our first gleaning evening of the season. Volunteers with the Maryland Food Bank came out to our farm this past Thursday evening and picked cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes were boxed up and taken to local food pantries the next day. If you’d like more info on getting involved with the Maryland Food Bank’s gleaning program click here. They go to farms all over the Eastern Shore picking various crops throughout the year. We expect to have another gleaning at our farm in about a month or so.
The recent gray rainy weather has brought out other visitors to our farm. The local wildlife is abundant on our property. There are various turkey flocks that reside or pass through our place but with the hot dry weather they have mainly been keeping to the cool woods. We have hardly seen any until this past week where we saw three distinct different flocks. They were having a great time walking through the tall wet grasses around our house and on the edge of our field eating insects and patrolling for other tasty treats. We also got a glimpse of young deer who still had their spots.
Luckily most of the wildlife on our place are not interested in our tomato crop so we don’t have to worry about them damaging the fruit. We are harvesting loads of cherry and heirloom tomatoes almost every single day. Our plants are just covered with colorful delectable fruit right now.
If you are looking to process tomatoes to store all this summer goodness make sure you take advantage of our heirloom tomato seconds. They are just $2.50 per pound and they are imperfectly delicious with cracks, bruises, and a little on the soft side. You can pre-order as many pounds as you want through our online shop.
With it being local tomato season we really want to showcase the wonderfulness that is heirloom tomatoes. So this week’s special will be our Tomato Garlic Scape Pesto Quesadilla. This show-stopping special is our garlic scape pesto spread over a flour tortilla topped with a blend of cheeses and slices of heirloom tomatoes then folded in half, cut into fours, and garnished with pico de gallo (which contains even more of our heirloom tomatoes). You can add an egg to it to make it more breakfast-y or add bacon to give it a more BLT vibe.
Our ceviche this week will be made with blue catfish. Blue catfish, which is an invasive species to the Chesapeake Bay, taste very similar to rockfish, the meat is firm and white with a mildly sweet taste. Adult blue catfish are not bottom feeders, so they don’t get the “muddy” taste some catfish do. Blue catfish can grow to more than 100 pounds, feeding on everything from underwater grasses to small striped bass. If you have never tried blue catfish, our ceviche is a great place to start.
We hope you have a chance to come out to the Easton farmers’ market this Saturday as the market is just bursting with summer bounty.