Red Fire Farm Tomato Festival

This past Saturday was the Red Fire Farm Tomato Festival - I had been excited about it all summer and it turned out to be a lot of fun! It was much more crowded than we had been expecting, which made things a bit hectic, but overall we had a good time.

Inside their barn were all different varieties of tomatoes (see the photos below) and other produce for purchase. We had fun wandering around looking at everything. We bought several melons and a bag of apples. The apples (Macintosh) have been quite tasty - we haven't cut the melons yet, but the ones we tasted at the festival were delicious (we bought one Peace Yellow melon and one small watermelon).


They had food vendors, including Black Sheep Deli which used their veggies in what they were offering. I had wanted to get a quesadilla, but they were out by the time we got to the front of the line. :( Oh well, the bruschetta was very tasty! Dan got grilled tomatoes, which were very good as well. I also got an apple smoothie and an AMAZING lemon almond cookie from El Jardin Bakery.

We waited in line for a very long time to taste lots of different heirloom tomatoes. The tasting was held inside their new building covered with solar panels - it's really a neat concept! As you can see from the second photo below, they will be able to generate half of their electricity from these panels once it's finally hooked up!


Although we would have liked to taste ALL of the kinds they were offering, they had a lot of trouble keeping up with the demand. I would say that we still tasted about 30 or 40 tomato varieties, and I'm not sure that I would have been able to eat that many more anyway. My favorite varieties were Matt's Wild Cherry, Juliet, and Favorita. Although my three favorites were red tomatoes, we also tried some that were green, orange, or brown. It was quite an experience!


After tasting the tomatoes, we had the opportunity to pick some veggies of our own - as CSA members, we are entitled to a certain amount of each kind of vegetable the farm grows. We hadn't had an opportunity to get to the farm before now, so we were excited to pick a lot of stuff!

We picked several pints of tomatoes, two pints of green beans, and ground cherries:


If you've never tried ground cherries, they are quite different from what I was expecting. They are ripe when they fall off the plant, and to eat them you peel off the husk and then eat the small yellow fruit inside. I actually thought they tasted more like grapes than cherries. Dan liked them more than I did!


We also had the chance to pick our own flowers - I'd never done that before, and it was a lot of fun creating our own bouquet. We were allowed to pick up to 7 Sunflower stems, and up to 10 of the other varieties. I've been enjoying our arrangement all week...

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Worth the Effort!

While we were on vacation in Oregon, we drove past numerous farms and were really excited about everything we saw. We finally decided to stop just outside of Portland at a pick-your-own fruit place, Hoffman Farms Store, and had the opportunity to pick both strawberries and two kinds of raspberries. I've never picked any of these fruits before, so it was a lot of fun!

Here are some photos so you can get a sense of the experience - I definitely recommend picking your own produce if you ever get the chance. It's a great way to spend a few hours... and besides, you get to eat the fruits of your labor. Literally!

Strawberries

Raspberries

Golden Raspberries


All done!

Neither of us had tasted golden raspberries before, but now I'll definitely seek them out. They're delicious, a little more sweet and less tart than regular raspberries. Don't just take my word for it though, try them for yourself!

PS - We also bought Rainier cherries several times over the course of our trip. They are SO good - I wish we could have brought some home with us!

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Farm Stay

I'm very excited to introduce my guest bloggers for the day - my parents! I hope you enjoy their post about a recent farm experience they had. I'm actually a bit jealous - sounds like their trip was a lot of fun. Have you ever done anything like this? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section...

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Shari was kind enough to hand over the keyboard to her Mom and Dad, thereby giving us a chance to post our very first blog entry. Our subject for today is a brief farm-oriented vacation we took last month. A few weeks earlier, we had driven across the heartland of New York State on the way back from our niece’s Cornell graduation in Ithaca. As we passed our millionth beautiful farm, Shari’s younger sister, our 20-year-old college student daughter, R, expressed a deep regret that she had not had a real chance to see farm life close up. In point of fact, R, who was born an animal lover, had begged all her life (unsuccessfully) for a furry pet. Since we had never fulfilled her pet dream, we were determined to at least find a way to give her a farm experience before she started her summer job a couple of weeks later.

A few Google searches unearthed a variety of Agritourism and Farm Stay websites that had links to B&Bs that combined comfortable accommodations with some sort of farm experience. We chose the Inn at Valley Farms B&B in Walpole, NH and stayed very comfortably in the Garden Suite in the main farm house. The farm was in a beautiful section of Southwestern New Hampshire. One of our first sights was of our very friendly hostess, Jackie, working with her daughters in her vegetable garden.

During our time at the farm, we enjoyed delicious breakfasts made with fresh, local products, including eggs from their own chickens. Without being excessively preachy or pushy, Jackie explained her family's philosophy of farming which included treating the animals humanely and using sustainable techniques such as allowing the chickens to graze naturally on rotating areas of the farm in uncrowded conditions. She told us that their thinking is very much guided by Michael Pollan. Jackie also lent us a DVD of Food, Inc, which we watched in the evening. I must say that our eyes were opened on some of the truly awful practices that food producers use to increase volume and cut cost.

Probably the highlight of our stay was the more than 2 hour detailed tour that Jackie gave us of all aspects of the large farm, from her garden to the chickens, turkeys, pigs, goats, and cattle that live peacefully in that truly beautiful corner of New England. R was overwhelmed by it all (and so were we), not the least of which was having the opportunity to remove a warm egg from under a chicken that had just laid it!

Some of our best vacations are those that have a consistent thread that weaves through our various experiences. This three day trip was no exception and that was certainly by intention. During our time at the farm and on the way to and from there, we took the opportunity to visit several other food and animal-oriented venues that really rounded out the experience, including:

- Retreat Farm in Brattleboro, VT, where we hand-fed hay to a variety of animals and where we shot a rather odd video.

- Sweet Maple Alpacas in Putney, VT, where we spent a fascinating hour with a very patient alpaca farmer learning all about these peaceful and amazing animals.


- Friendly Farm, in Dublin, NH, where we had taken R as a 2-year-old and where she got as much of a thrill as a 20-year-old bottle feeding a baby goat.

- Grafton Village Cheese Company in Brattleboro and Grafton, VT, where we witnessed cheese being made, sampled a bunch, and left with several bars of Cheddar.

While I can’t say we were transformed, we were certainly affected by our experiences. We are trying to buy more fruits and vegetables locally which, of course, has become easier with the proliferation of farmer’s markets. I can tell you that I have not since purchased eggs in a plastic container – one of Jackie’s pet peeves. And I think I can also say for certain that R’s wish was more than fulfilled.

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