***There will be no New Market Farmer’s Market tomorrow afternoon.***

The tomato vines are producing increasing amounts of fruit every day, and as often happens around this time of year, I am running out of space to store these beautiful tomatoes! The bright red Abraham Lincolns have a wonderful tomato flavor, the Hungarian hearts are big, beefy sauce tomatoes, the unique green zebras offer a fun color combo as well as lemony flavor, and the enormous Aunt Glees are perfect for sandwiches with their bread-sized slices and meaty texture.

As the tomatoes take off, the bush beans seem to be winding down. Stress from deer and bean beetles combined with the fact that it’s getting late in the season are resulting in tired-looking plants and lower bean yields. The dragon tongue beans are still doing decently, though, and the pole beans have begun flowering, so I should still have some beans to offer in the coming weeks.

• 

• 

• 

In the kitchen this week, I canned a batch of dilly beans (pickled green beans), which it turns out the dragon tongue variety is great for. I also made homemade pizza, as essential as tomato sandwiches this time of year, with whole wheat zucchini crust topped with fresh basil, minced garlic, tomato slices, red onion, mozzarella, and parmesan.

Want to make some of these yourself? Although the market is closed tomorrow, you can still contact me via email or Facebook Messenger for on-farm pickup or in-town delivery. I have a limited amount of beans (green and dragon tongue) and zucchini as well as plenty of tomatoes, garlic, basil (mmm, pesto!), and rosemary.

• 

• 

~*~

Picking beans so easily becomes tedium
if we aren’t paying attention,
but I’m finding that this meditative task
gives me a chance to think about
the more important things in life,
like poetry and wild geese
and blessings of abundance.

~*~

As you may have seen on Facebook, the beans are producing a bumper crop this week, which means I’m picking them every day. It does feel tedious at times, but I also enjoy watching wobbly Vs of geese fly overhead. And when I begin to despair over how many beans I have to pick, I try to draw my mind back to what a blessing it is to have this much fresh food, produced by the living soil in my backyard and a bit of work from my own hands.

I discovered that dragon tongue bush beans taste as good as they look and have an excellent texture. Sadly, like other purple beans, they do lose their coloring when cooked and become a pale yet pretty yellow-green, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post. They would look pretty spectacular in a raw salad, though!

• 

• 

Today, I’d like to introduce you to the tomato variety I’m most excited about this year: Aunt Glee’s big pink heirloom tomato. This is a family heirloom I didn’t even know existed until my mom’s cousin handed me an envelope of seeds last summer when he stopped by the farmer’s market.

I planted the seeds indoors in March, then eagerly watched their progress until, weeks after the plants had been set out in the garden, green globes appeared on the vines sometime in July. The fruits grew bigger, and bigger … and bigger. The “big pink” in the name is no joke: the first Aunt Glee’s tomato I harvested weighed in at 1.7 pounds. When I finally sliced it up for the first tomato sandwich of the summer, I found that it was delightfully meaty and the perfect size for sandwiches.

You can find both dragon tongue beans and Aunt Glee’s big pink heirloom tomatoes at the New Market Farmer’s Market tomorrow afternoon, along with other heirloom tomatoes, tender gray zucchini, contender (green) beans, and Polish white garlic.

P.S. Want to get these updates in your inbox? Sign up in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page!

Inexplicably, one of my favorite crops is bush beans, and the variety I am most excited about this year finally began ripening this week: dragon tongue bush beans! This unique Dutch heirloom produces flat yellow pods with fun purple streaks. And when I began picking them for the first time yesterday, I discovered that they do, in fact, give the impression of a dragon tongue with their fantastical coloring and slightly wavy shape. Since they only just began producing, I won’t have any to sell this week, but maybe next week.

I’ve been overrun with green beans and zucchini lately, though the latter has slowed down significantly in the past few days, and tomatoes have started ripening! Supper at my house often takes on the theme of How many dishes can I hide (or feature!) zucchini in? One evening this week we had zucchini pie topped with fresh tomato slices and served with blueberry zucchini muffins. And one of our favorite ways to eat green beans is sautéed with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and Thai sweet chili sauce, sometimes with cubed tofu mixed in.

• 

• 

• 

Offerings at the farmer’s market tomorrow afternoon will include lots of green beans, some zucchini, tomatoes, and possibly fresh herbs. I might even have some garlic!

P.S. Want to get these updates in your inbox? Sign up in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page!