Maters and Friends

55, cool, crisp, heavy dew. Perfect morning..

We made a quick trip across the Ohio River this morning to pick tomatoes. There are several truck farms over there, and acres of tomatoes. Acdes and acres. While the plants are blighted, they are still absolutely loaded with tomatoes. We got about 5 -6 bushels, which will mostly go into tomato juice, and some for pasta sauce. 

Tomatoes almost as far as the eye can see, and the same in tbe other direction.

I think I have my work cut out for me!

I played hooky from canning yesterday and spent the day with friends. I picked up Nancy, who is visiting from Arizona and we headed out on a daylong ramble. I met Nancy's husband Don when we were building our house, back in 1975. He was 19, I was 24. He had bought 23 acres od forest from a timber company that had divided a huge tract into parcels. The road was impassable, even worse than ours at the time. Don built a small cabin using vertical logs, coming back in summer months to work on it, but never really finishing it. His cabin is primitive, no running water or electricity, and down a very steep bank. Since he retired several years ago he and Nancy have come back almost every year, and he continues to work on his cabin. Tbese days the road is mostly drivable with a 4WD.

So, Nancy and I set off for Ravenswood to meet my friend Patricia. I had cabbage plants for Patricia,  and she had some Chinese cabbage plants for me. We met at the Sayre cabin at Ravenswood's riverfront park. The cabin is part of the museum; built in the 1800s, it was moved from a local farm to the park where it could be preserved. The museum curator has developed an interesting garden including flowers, veggis and herbs, so Patricia, Nancy and I had a good time exploring the small but well maintained space.

Nancy and I in the garden. Being an Arizona for the past 20 years, she doesn't remember a lot of our eastern plants.

Then we were off for a drive along the river, and over to a church-run thrift, where we both found some nice vintage linens.  By then it was lunch time, so we met my friend Rachel at Farmhouse Market Finds in Ripley,  where I have a booth. We browsed the store, had a nice lunch, then went to Rachel's to see her stained glass.  Nancy works in stained glass, and Rachel's late husband was also a stained glass artist, so they had much to talk about.

Finally we stopped at my friend Sherry's store, West Virginia Artisan Center, to shop a bit more, and then finally home. It was a fun day and I was glad to have this time with friends, something that gets more important with age.

Now I must get back to the kitchen. I have all these tomatoes plus our homegrown ones, a couple gallons of cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, peppers, some corn, wild chanterelle mushrooms we found the other day, and wild elderberries we picked this morning, all to get worked up and stored away in the next few days.

Wish me luck!

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