The kale doesn’t care about our five-year plan. Neither do the chickens.
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SEPTEMBER 11, 2026
A typical morning harvest around here - cherry tomatoes from the tunnel, pepperoncini from the field, & eggs from the coop
Tomato, tomahto
This week, we're celebrating tomatoes.
The plants are fruiting so heavily, their branches are bowing under their own weight. There are weeks it's felt like the Great Tomato Race and we harvest as much as we can preserve and enjoy. Sometimes, we get beat to the finish line and we find fruits that have grown too full for their own skin splitting under the pressure of their own sweetness. (These are the treasures the chickens are happiest to find in the compost.)
Here's what all that racing has looked like ~
I seeded this tray of tomatoes the first week of April. I will never not be amazed that the fruit I'm eating now started as a teardrop-sized seed that I buried in the dirt. Magic.
Late May, we transplanted the tomatoes into the field (a little later than we'd hoped). "I'll just be happy if we can make fresh sauce," Drew manifested.
Before long, we had a wall of cherry tomatoes - climbing and fruiting and climbing and fruiting.
We couldn't get our hands on Roma tomato seeds, but we did find San Marzano tomato seeds. I love their elongated, tapered shape - and I'm already excited to plant more of this heirloom variety next year.
Don't worry, Drew got plenty of sauce. We love simmering these Sungold Cherry Tomatoes with garlic, oil and fresh herbs for a quick dinner. Or lunch. Or snack.
Behind the scenes from a family harvest
Besides using canning as a way to preserve the harvest, this year, we're trying our hands at sundried tomatoes. Stay tuned.
Yesterday's harvest. The Great Tomato Race continues...
Clementina
This season, I've loved sharing stories from sunnyside with you.
But it's hard to tell my farming story without starting with Clementina.
Clementina Patalano was born in Gaeta - a small, farming village in Lazio, Italy.
But America - the land of opportunity - shimmered on the horizon.
You know how the story goes: with nothing but the clothes on her back and a dream for a better life in her heart, Clementina, and her new husband, Erasmo Magliozzi, set off for Brooklyn, New York.
While Erasmo got a job as a fishmonger down the street at Sheepshead Bay, Clementina took pride in growing food - tomatoes, garlic, basil - that reminded them of their childhood.
The Old World recipes using seasonal, staple ingredients lived in her hands.
She’d hook the pasta press to the kitchen counter and crank out sheets of dough, stretching and cutting noodles that draped and dried off every inch of that apartment.
The seductive smell of simmering sauce wafted onto the streets of Manhattan Beach.
Her secret?
Starting with a base of fish heads and adding a pinch of sugar to cut through the acidity of the fresh tomatoes.
She never forgot that food was meant to be slow and shared.
Because in la cucina povera, a tomato isn’t just a tomato - it’s medicine, memory, and what holds community together.
Decades later, I would sit with Clementina and tell her that my mom had taught me how to make sauce from scratch.
She raised an eyebrow playfully.
“Did you go into the garden and pick your own tomatoes? How about the basil?”
“No,” I giggled, recalling the packaged products we picked up from the grocery store instead.
Tsk, tsk tsk...
“Then you didn’t make it from scratch.” She clicked her tongue at me.
Clementina was cheeky and determined until the day she died in 2005 - at 103 years old.
Today, as I wash the tomato tar off my fingers - that sticky, dark-green residue you get from handling the plant’s vine - I can feel her with me.
Yeah, Nonna — this time, I did go into the garden.
It feels strange to end a newsletter about tomatoes without acknowledging the date. I’m holding a little extra tenderness for NYC today.
