August is such a month of color and bounty. Every day we pick gorgeous vegetables of deep orange and purple and red and yellow and green. At the farmers markets we display tomato tables of astounding beauty. And yet, August is the hardest month in so many ways. The work is so repetitive. We pick and pick and pick. We barely plant anything. Weeding gets to be a treat. We do start putting some seeds in the ground, but that is not a group activity--that is one person on a tractor so the rest of the team doesn't get to see that the future is changing. In some ways, August is our month of Groundhog Days. The tomatoes just keep on ripening behind us as we move down the row. But Peak Tomato is such a brief moment, and those of us who have been through this for dozens of years know that the end of this overwhelming bounty is only a few weeks away. When we look at these vibrant tomato plants, we can already see them reaching old age.
Last Monday was a rainy day and I spent the afternoon canning tomatoes. The colors glowed through the jars after I lifted them out of the pot. There is nothing more satisfying than putting August into a jar so we can have some summer flavors in January. I recommend that you put something away for the winter too, even if you just freeze some tomatoes in a bag. So much pleasure in the dead of winter!
We have three more weeks of Summer Shares. If you have not signed up for Autumn and you want to, now is the time.
