This evening was spent boiling vinegar, brown sugar, and salt to be poured into sterilized jars filled with sliced bell peppers so I could make a peck of pickled peppers.
Tomatoes
Three hundred plus pounds and counting, that’s how many tomatoes I’ve taken home from my volunteering out on the farm. What do three hundred pounds of tomatoes look like? Well, the boxes in today’s photos hold about eleven and a half pounds each, which equates to twenty-seven flats of tomatoes which would stand seven and a half feet tall. So, what does one do with that many tomatoes? One gets busy, that’s what. I’ve made stewed tomatoes, canned whole tomatoes, pasta sauce, basil and bell pepper pasta sauce, V8 tomato juice, dried tomatoes, and tomato salads. We’ll be eating the sweet taste of summer well into next year, I can assure you.
The 4th of July
It’s the celebration of Independence Day in America today. On this day I am doing just what many of the settlers of the United States were doing 232 years ago as our forefathers ratified the Declaration of Independence: I am working on the farm. I awoke at 3:45 so I could eat, get ready, and be in the field as the sun rose. I feel fortunate for this experience of working on a farm as I now know what effort must be put forward for our food. I more than ever appreciate the work of migrants who toil our earth so we may have access to inexpensive food on our tables and in our restaurants. As summer encroaches and crops hang on the precipice of heat-induced failure, I will think of what our ancestors endured in order to establish a foothold and create new communities. Today as I labor to bring this food to others, I will be thankful for all of the hard work both physical and intellectual that goes into making a country prosperous, free, and happy.
Poof, You Are Salsa
Took a big bag of assorted peppers including jalapeno, poblano, Hungarian wax, anaheim, some bells, and a few I could not identify from Tonopah Rob’s vegetable farm where I have been volunteering and visited my friend Nelson over at Mi Pueblo Mexican restaurant where he threw them under the fire and roasted them smokey black before I turned them into salsa.
Solarized
And the sky spoke unto me, look upon my glory and weep at the beauty you behold…
Want To Bet I’m a Prince?
So there I was crawling along under the bell pepper canopy over at Tonopah Rob’s vegetable farm looking for crickets to photograph when I stumbled upon this Colorado river toad hogging up the path. He tried staring me down, he tried intimidating me with his stalwart presence and purposeful stance, but I said, “ribbit” and he simply stepped aside and left me to my hunt for crickets. What a nice toad he was.