sadness and sauce

My grandfather's family was one of the many that came over during the Irish potato blight. The Irish made the classic mistake of overfarming one staple. They didn't diversify their crops, so when blight set in, it spread rapidly and destroyed a major portion of their food supply. These days some farmers choose to use pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides to control this, but organic farmers must be more creative and use crop diversity.

June was wet and rainy and cold. I left for Korea in July (where it was hot and sunny most of the time), but when I came back I heard that the rain kept going. At the same time, all six New England states where attacked with late blight. This is the same blight that caused the potatoes to rot in Ireland. In this case, though, they attacked the tomatoes. Home Depot, Lowe's, and other stores had to pull their tomato plants. The other farmers held their breaths and hoped for sun.

But sadly, the rainy weather caused the blight to spread and the tomato plants started to die, and the tomatoes started to rot. The farmers heard that the blight hit Lincoln, they warned us, we got a few tomatoes, and then it was mostly over.

Kate said she went to the Northeast Organic Farming conference out at UMass Amherst, and that seasoned farmers said this was the worst growing season in 40 years. So we're all in this together. I've heard that a lot of farms have lost their crops, and a few lucky ones are still going. A few still hadn't had tomatoes 2 weeks ago, because even without blight, the cold summer prevents ripening.

So I took my few sad-looking tomatoes and made up some stuffed peppers. Til next year.

I hear the melons are looking good, so I'm waiting for that!