Well, as you know, it hasn't been an issue. Since our beautiful early-March weekend, we have seen several days of thick wet snow and a persistent failure of thermometers to climb up out of the twenties overnight. Most days, even when it's nominally in the low forties, the wind blows so hard that it's hardly picnic weather. Crops are growing in the high tunnel, especially when it gets at all sunny outside...but the ground is still cold, wet, and stuck somewhere in that gelatinous state between frozen and muddy. Potato planting is not yet a concern.
And so, on such days, I can at least head downstairs and check out the tomatoes. I love tomatoes, as I imagine you do too. Everyone loves fresh tomatoes. As a kid I never liked them on sandwiches or salads - I still tend to avoid them unless I know their source - but I eventually figured out that it's not the tomatoes' fault. Its just that fast food chains go in for the "moist cardboard" type of tomato, so they can supply us year-round. In-season tomatoes are a totally different plant, and of all of them - of all the tomato magic out there, the heirlooms, the grafts, the esoteric pruning and trellising techniques - the Sungold Cherry Tomato has a special place all its own.
Parents know that finicky children will eat sungolds like candy, popping them into their mouth one after another. This is almost always enough...a pint or two of fresh-picked sungolds will disappear this way in most families' homes overnight. We all know that tomatoes are 'technically a fruit' (the media are still surprised by this, though - they all write it as if it was discovered yesterday), but with sungolds there is never any doubt. People treat them as a berry.
Only once have I really had to do anything with these delicious summer treats besides eat them raw. Last year, a friend of mine managed a farm in central PA with such ferocious efficiency that he grew far more of many crops than he could market. I stopped in to visit him and he shoveled produce at me - bushels of cucumbers, boxes full of potatoes, barrels of kale, buckets of sungolds. Imagine a five-gallon bucket full of cherry tomatoes and you'll get the idea. So we started figuring out what to do with them. They make great ketchup (so naturally sweet you don't need to add any sugar). Dried in a food dehydrator, they turn into a bite-sized burst of tomato flavor perfectly sized to add to a late-winter dish. You can do almost anything to them that you can to a normal tomato - just don't end up in a recipe where you have to peel them!
I've been thinking of this bounty lately when I check out my seedling tomatoes, because there are a lot of sungolds down there. I planned on having enough to pretty much fill the greenhouse this summer, and enough to sell some at market to interested customers. I hope we have some interested customers, because they have germinated at nearly 100% efficiency. I would estimate that over five hundred plants are growing away by this point - not all of my tomatoes, mind you, just five hundred plus Sungold cherry tomatoes. They're wonderful to see on a snowy, windy day. They smell like tomatoes already. I hope you're as excited as I am! But if not we'll be enjoying our ketchup again this winter.
