The other gourmaniac and I took a detour from our Riverhead destination yesterday afternoon and drove out to Calverton where “our” tomato farm is located. It’s the one we frequent every late August to hand pick a dozen or so bushels of plum tomatoes for our home made tomato sauce. The reason for this year’s early visit to the farm was to check on the health of the tomato plants. The East End of Long Island is this year’s national epicenter for Late Blight, a plant disease that affects potato and tomato plants with deadly consequences to the harvest. Late Blight was responsible for the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-nineteenth century. It is highly contagious for plants, and once it gets going, it’s almost impossible to stop. Hence our concern for the tomato plants at the farm where we pick. The good news is that the farm’s plants are unaffected … so far. Even better news is that the first planting of the farm’s tomatoes will be ready for harvest in a couple of weeks; so you can bet the 2GMs will be out tomato picking and putting up sauce before the end of the month. I plan to make videos of the process this year, so say tuned.
After visiting the tomato farm, and buoyed by good news gleaned there, I redirected our journey back towards Riverhead and our original destination. Not too far from the farm, I had to pull up short on the side of the road, unable to proceed any further, because I had to capture a couple of images.
And to counteract and balance all the gloom and doom about Late Blight, I thought I’d post a couple of images from our roadside “detraction” yesterday. When I saw it I joked with the other gourmaniac that at our next private chef gig, I think I’ll see if “yummy-mobile” is available for a surprise dessert stop, say at some Bridgehampton or East Hampton mansion. I can just imagine the expression on my clients’ faces.
RMA
