Dear Farm Community -

Please join me in giving a warm welcome to the highly anticipated, highly sought after, juiciest, most delightful, most joyously eaten HEIRLOOM TOMATO!

🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅 HELLOOOOO TOMATOOOOOES! 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

This past weekend marked our first substantial haul of tomatoes to the markets, and we still sold out before 10am! However this is still just a sampling of the tons and tons (and tons) of tomatoes to come. It’s no wonder our tomatoes fly off the tables fast though - while we invest a huge amount of love, care, and expertise into everything we grow, tomatoes are one crop that we turn the dial up on, ensuring that what we bring to market and pack into your CSA shares is the absolute best a tomato can be.

Our love for tomatoes shows up in the huge range of varieties we plant. Year after year we keep a keen eye on which varieties thrive and produce our yummiest highest quality tomatoes of the season. We use those observations, along with the other puzzle pieces of our crop planning, to inform future years planting. We are always trying out carefully-selected varieties to add to the planting schedule, too! This year we have over a dozen different varieties planted, including favorites like Cherokee Purple and Brandywine, to more niche varieties like Striped German, Marbonne, and GinFiz! Later on in the season you will see the full span of our careful planning, when we have a tomato for every occasion (like Roma tomatoes for sauce, firmer slicing varieties that hold up best in sandwiches, small sungolds for snacking, and a beautiful rainbow of large cherry tomatoes for cutting up in salads and your endless summer recipes!)

And to think…. it all began with seeds sown in early January…..

We had a really wonderful market weekend with our usual digs at Freedom Farmers Market, Morningside Farmers Market, and Athens Farmers Market, and our bonus market at the Monroe Blooms Festival was a huge success and SUCH a fun time! Thanks to everybody who made it out to say hi to Farmer Alex and take part in the festivities - may your plants thrive in this beautiful Georgia sunshine!

❀ A special memo to our Atlanta customers - We are looking for market help this summer! Are you or someone you know interested in helping out with our Freedom and Morningside booths? Diamond Hill Farm is looking for an enthusiastic, kind, motivated, personable, veggie-and-flower-loving individual to help with market days. Activities include unloading the van and booth set-up in the morning, cashiering during the market, restocking, and breakdown and loading at the end of the market. Must be able to lift up to 50lbs safely. Market experience a huge bonus but not required. Generous compensation and produce discounts! Hours are Saturday 6:30am to approximately 12:30pm rain or shine at either the Freedom Farmers Market or Morningside Farmers Market depending on the week. If interested, please email diamondhillfarmga@gmail.com.

Obviously it wouldn’t be a tomato newsletter week without some juicy tomatoes in your CSA shares! We are reveling in summer abundance already and the equinox is still 3 days away! With this heat wave looking to last a week or more with highs in the 90’s, some gazpacho is exactly what the doctor ordered (and generous amounts of water - keep hydrated, people!). Tomato gazpacho is a soup with roots very close to farming - beginning in the 16th century when crops like tomatoes and peppers were brought back to Europe from Mexico, Spanish farmers would eat gazpacho often to keep nourished while working the fields. Despite being a light dish, it provided energy and strength to continue with the workday and made use of the abundance on hand. There are plenty of gazpacho recipes out there on the internet, but I cracked the spine of an old Spanish cookbook in my kitchen to dig up this one :) This recipe serves 6 and calls for 3 full pounds of tomatoes plus one for garnish - scale it down to the 1lb of tomatoes headed to you in your share or swing by our Wednesday night market at Creature Comforts to pick up a few more and make the full recipe!

Gazpacho Rojo de Sevilla

for the soup:
3 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled and cut up (or scale to 1lb)
1/2 large red pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced (or scale to 1/4 cup)
1/2 large cucumber, peeled and cut up (or scale to 1/2 cup)
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic (or scale to 1/2 teaspoon)
4 tablespoons olive oil (or scale to 1.5 tablespoons)
1/3 cup sherry wine vinegar, or to taste (or scale to 3 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste (or scale to a pinch)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste (or scale to a pinch)

for the garnish
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 slices of bread without crust, diced small
1/2 large red pepper, seeded and diced
1/2 large cucumber, peeled and diced
1/2 red onion, diced small

to prepare the soup: Puree the vegetables in the blender with the garlic, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Add 1 cup water (or scale to 1/3 cup), or more if you prefer a thinner soup. Refrigerate before serving.

to prepare the garnish: In a small skillet, heat the olive oiled sauté the bread over medium-high heat until golden brown. Garnish chilled soup with croutons and diced vegetables.

There will be ample time this summer to explore the world of cooking with tomatoes, so I’ll leave you with some kale inspiration before greens season has passed us by completely! Try out this tried-and-true recipe for kale chips, a delicious bright kale salad for this summertime heat, or cool down with this cucumber-kale smoothie!

Whatever ways you use this abundance, we hope you enjoy!

Happy Eating :)
Diamond Hill Farmers

P.S. Check out the wacky carrot we found this week in the photos below 😱

CSA is gettin’ HOT!!!!!! Sign up any time!

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