story of a hurricane

Ok, maybe it’s a tropical storm. Danny, to be precise.

We’ve know he’s coming for a few days. The timing of the whole thing is pretty gross. This morning is the last Saturday market of August, the last hurrah if you will, or at least it was supposed to be. Instead, it’s pouring buckets, and we’re not there. Let me tell the story. Actually, it’s a happy story. I promise.

Caitlin and I decided pretty early on that we weren’t going to go, that we’d just take the financial hit, which we were probably going to take anyways, given that vacationers around here tend to avoid leaving their houses on wet weekend mornings and turnout at rainy markets is dismal.

But then Danielle from Scottish Bakehouse came by the farm and agreed to buy tomatoes. Lots of them. As in over 100 pints of them.

At which point I may or may not have done a jig in the driveway.

Cherry tomatoes in general and sungolds in particular have a tendency to split in the rain – the excess moisture causes them to swell until they burst, a long open seam radiating from the stem end. Once they split, they rot quickly, and are not fit for sale. The greenhouse plants were safe. But the outdoor trellised rows, which are producing heavily now, were about to get trashed.

Caitlin and I picked those rows for a few hours, filling one cardboard box after another with literally thousands of tiny tomatoes and stacking them in the tacoma. It was such an unexpected blessing, to have the washout weekend redeemed, to see the tomatoes put to good use.

We’ve been so lucky that Danielle is so flexible about buying produce from us. Part of the challenge of the farm-restaurant connection is that the supply we provide is inherently, intensely seasonal, here today and gone tomorrow. It’s hard to make plans for using it. It’s hard to process or sell it all at once. It’s more expensive as an input, making it harder for the buyer to then turn a profit. Pretty much every restaurant around on the island loves to toot their own horn about the local food they use, but not every restaurant follows through and walks the walk. She does. And we love her for it.