Trombolino Squash

My brother is growing Trombolino squash in the Zazu garden. He tells me it can be used as both a summer squash-when small-and a winter squash-just allow it to get big.

When Sarah and I were watering at Zazu today we found a really big one:

They sometimes grow in curlicues and can make great hats:

Sarah the Crazy Canner!

Sarah making pickled green beans!

Shone Farm

Last week Sarah had a field trip to Shone Farm for her ag economics class at the Santa Rosa Junior College and I got to tag along. Shone Farm acts as an outdoor, hands-on classroom and laboratory for the SRJC. They have forest, pasture for the ewe and lamb program and beef cattle, horses, 60 acres of wine grapes, and a sustainable agriculture area which includes olives, a market garden, and an organic vineyard. It is located just north of Forestville in the Russian River watershed.

They have a problem with predators gobbling up their lambs so they pasture llamas with the sheep to keep the lambs safe.

The organic farm section of Shone Farm sells produce at farm stands on the SRJC campus and through a CSA program. This white board shows what was in the CSA boxes for that week.

The ag program works with the culinary program, providing ingredients for the culinary students to cook with. In return, the culinary students give the farm cooked food to put into the CSA boxes, making them unique as most CSA boxes have only fresh produce. This week the culinary students made foccacia.

Water is an issue on Shone Farm. They use surplus water from the Russian River--this means that years when the water flow is too low the farm does not get water. For these dry summers they cannot grow vegetables.

Below you can see their sprinkler system for the veggies:

Shone Farm also irrigates with reclaimed water, but not their veggies, only the pastures and the vineyards (via drip to avoid contaminating the fruit). This means that even during dry years their vineyards and pastures have water.

Broiled Tomatoes!!

Broiled tomatoes are quick, easy and tasty way to prepare tomatoes that partially cooks them but does not take away all the wonderful qualities of fresh tomatoes.

Ingredients:

Fresh Tomatoes

Mayonnaise

Basil

Paprika

Toaster Oven

Here is an example of one of the beautiful tomatoes my mom has grown; it is called a pineapple tomato. They are very similar to the 'Mr. Stripey' tomato.

First cut the tomatoes in half. At this point you can put them into the toaster oven for a few minutes to bake if you would like them more cooked, or you can skip the pre-bake step for a less cooked dish.

Second, put scoops of mayonnaise on top. This mayonnaise can be very slippery so carefully smush it onto the top with a spoon. It helps if the tomato halves are propped completely upright. My mother cuts them so the two halves still have a little piece of skin attaching them and this helps them stay upright.

Then take fresh basil, rip it up and stick it on top.

Stick them into the toast oven on broil for a few minutes, until the basil gets shriveled and the top of the mayonnaise turns golden. Take them out and sprinkle a bit of paprika on top.

Yum yum!!

Sarah Silva with her pigs