New York harvest

Matt and I spent the weekend in Knox, New York at his grandparents’ house, a.k.a Turtle Hill Farm. It was a 48-hour trip for me; for Matt it was a nice weekend wedged between two business trips.

Visiting Turtle Hill is truly a rural experience, at least for we D.C. urban-suburb types. There is not a neighbor in sight, pets roam free, there is a tractor in the garage, strangers wave when you pass on the road, and there’s a pond in the back yard. And it has “turtle” in the name for a reason—Matt and I spotted at least three, plus dozens of catfish in the pond. I attempted some nature photography, but my attempts turned out small and blurry.

The theme of the trip was harvesting. Matt’s grandmother planted a square-foot garden with amazing results. We ate just picked pattypan squash (there are varying spellings online, I like this one), red and yellow tomatoes, garlic, basil, and parsley.

I highly recommend growing pattypan. It’s a tiny squash than can be sautéed with olive oil, herbs, and garlic. And for fun, if you “forget” to pick it, it keeps growing. This one got lost under a squash leaf:

We went to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning to pick up a bushel of tomatoes. Matt’s grandmother had ordered a half bushel, but we did the math and figured out the Staples box they came in actually held a bushel’s worth. This is what three-quarters of them look like; the soft and split ones are already pulled out:

Not up for slaving away all day to can the tomatoes, we opted to freeze them. We cored and chopped each one (leaving the skin on), pulsed them once or twice in the food processor, then dumped them in a bowl:

When we ran out of bowl space, we used a slotted spoon to ladle the tomatoes into mason jars (dishwasher sterilized) and put them in the freezer. In the end, they should function like canned tomatoes. They can be thawed and dumped into soups and stews until tomato season rolls around again next year.

The whole process took about an hour, cost $17.50, and yielded 14 pint sized servings of frozen tomatoes (we ran out of jars, or I think we could have produced 20 in total). The cost drops if you factor in canning jars that can be used for many years to come. It’s worthwhile, considering there will be no colorless fresh tomatoes or bland canned tomatoes at Turtle Hill Farm this winter.

I’m a convert—if I can find freezer space and a farmer’s market that will sell me bulk tomatoes, I’ll definitely try it on my own.