Thanksgiving Arrives With Wind & Rain

Raymond's Gut, whitecaps of the White Oak River in the distance

It seems like fall just arrived and my friend Scott in his post, We Was Robbed, is hoping for his Carolina friends or actually me to "get plastered by the big storm" that just passed us.  Perhaps I upset his midwestern soul by offering to send him some tomato plants as this November was drawing to a close.

I guess that I can publicly break the news to Scott that while the storm huffed and puffed and threw some rain at us, our little piece of paradise along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks survived.  Morehead City and Atlantic Beach which are both about twenty miles east of us did get visited by a confirmed tornado.  The general area damaged is close to the big bridge across Bogue Sound just over the word City in this map of directions to Harkers Island.

Eastern North Carolina is no stranger to tornadoes but they rarely reach the intensity of ones seen further inland. Our subdivision, Bluewater Cove, just off the White Oak River only got some soggy ground from the storm which visited just as Thanksgiving guests were arriving.  Our wet ground from the storm's 1.7 inches of rain will be gone by tomorrow.

We did not even have to empty our rain gauges for that storm unlike the one which visited us in September, 2010. That localized rainstorm which still defies description gave us 20.25 inches of rain in less than 24 hours.  After that storm I decided it was far better to live in area where the drains are big like the White Oak River's nearly two mile width than it is to live in the mountains where three or four inches of rain can cause flooding.

In the seven years that we have lived on the Crystal Coast, one waterspout coming off the river turned into a tornado that brushed our subdivision.  Tornadoes are scary events and almost no seems out of the reach of them these days.  Our friends in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, near Pulaski can testify to that.

If you live on the coast, you are no stranger to serious weather.  Hurricane Irene was an impressive weather event and I am happy that Irene is the only serious storm to visit our area since we have been here.  Irene taught us to be prepared for dangerous weather, but it certainly did not shake our love of living along the coast.  It turns out that few places are immune from bad weather.

We were months away from finally selling our longtime home in Southwest, Virginia in the summer of 2012 when the area was hit with a Derecho.  The power in our mountain home was out for over a week since the storm took down some of the power transmission towers from West Virginia that provide electricity to Roanoke.  Until that summer when we moved, Roanoke seemed one of the safest places on earth.

Coastal weather sometimes appears to be a riddle that few can decipher.  We have the dry spells that inland areas often endure but we can also get some serious wet spells.  Like most places we take whatever the weather brings us and try to go about our lives with minimal disruption.

However, we can count on the North Carolina sun to give us a long growing season.  My Northern friends are likely upset that I will be ordering my tomato seed this weekend.  The plants will go into the ground around the middle of March when we often get wonderful weather.  We usually have plenty of tasty homegrown tomatoes by the end of May or early June.  I had so many tomatoes in 2011 that we loaded them in boxes and took them inland to some relatives that who were still waiting for their first tomatoes as July rolled around.  We even had enough that year to supply the tomatoes for our church's Fourth of July cookout.

The last few years we have enjoyed wonderful crops of winter lettuce.  I am hoping we get a regular winter instead of one of those old fashioned winters which could put a damper on our middle of the winter lettuce.  We are just getting ready to cut our first heads of fall Romaine.  We have already enjoyed some arugula and our butter crunch lettuce is not far behind.  We still have high hopes for our peas and of course we are still cutting broccoli from our fall plantings.  Our cabbage have just formed their heads so we will likely have one of those soon.

All of that sounds like we have a huge garden, but that is not the case.  We just use all the space that we have available including planting lettuce between our ornamental bushes.  We have a small lettuce patch in an area we call the solarium.  We grow tomatoes in the same spot during the summer.  Along our driveway we have another lettuce patch.  The same area is used for tomatoes in the summer.  Our English garden peas are in an area along our bulkhead where we grow green beans and cucumbers in the summer.  We also have a few spots where we grow herbs.  While some of our winter vegetables get a little frosty they usually recover without any problems.

Our biggest challenge is that some of our ground gets very little rest.  We are trying to get ahead of that problem with composting and perhaps even expanding our garden area with some additional raised beds next year.  I am hoping to have some cherry tomatoes in January of this year.  I have one plant that is in the ground near the water where our ground stays frost free the longest.  I have resorted to covering it during this colder than normal November, but so far it has not only survived but is blooming.  I have another couple of cherry tomatoes that are in pots.  They go out in the solarium most of the time and come into the garage on cold nights.  One of them actually has tiny tomatoes on it.

I wish my friend, Scott, lived closer to us than Chicago.  We have some beautiful Romaine lettuce and nearly perfect broccoli that I would love to share.  He could join us for a peaceful Thanksgiving along Raymond's Gut and leave the holiday madness of the city far behind.

However, he is going to miss this year's turkey so hopefully he will not be upset if I send him pictures of my cherry tomatoes when they get ripe in January.

That first hint of summer

There is no doubt that as you get older the years speed up. Sometimes it is hard to comprehend how fast time flies.

There is one exception to that rule. Time moves slowly when waiting for that first home grown tomato of the season. Of course the wait is a lot longer in some places than it is others.

I have grown tomatoes in Canada's Maritimes, in Virginia's mountains, and in few spots in North Carolina. In Nova Scotia, we were lucky out on the shores of the Bay of Fundy to get tomatoes by the end of August. The inland Annapolis Valley did much better at tomatoes. In New Brunswick on our farm north of Frederiction, we could expect to see tomatoes in early to mid-August.

Moving south, we found that our tomatoes in Roanoke, Virginia would ripen sometime after the Fourth of July, but they often did not make it until the second or third week of July. My mother grew many tomatoes in North Carolina's Piedmont. There you were considered a good gardener if you could produce a ripe tomato by the Fourth.

When we moved to the Carolina coast the equation changed drastically. On June 1, 2008, I recorded a ripe tomato and easily crushed my fellow competitors in the annual tomato contest. Last year, it took a little longer, but we still had tomatoes before the first week in June was out.

This year I took a risk and put my tomato plants in the ground on March 24. Yesterday I was rewarded with my first ripe tomatoes. They are the cherry type, but what this has taught me is that I should probably move the location of my early plants so that they get more sun.

I am still expecting to have ripe sandwich size tomatoes in a week or so. That is about three months early compared to Nova Scotia. Of course a lot will depend on the weather. If we get some good hot days, we will be in good shape.

This time of year hot weather is a good thing. It allows us to get out on the river, walk the beaches, and grow some great homegrown tomatoes.

The proof is in the sandwich

In the tomato business, I think the real proof is in the sandwich, but it does not hurt to have some nice numbers on the digital scale.

So far this is the largest tomato that we have harvested from our three plants this year. It weighed an impressive 1.335 pounds on the scale.

I also took a picture of the tomato beside a tape measure. It measured around five inches across and was about 3.5 inches high.

Still the end result, this plate of tomatoes, was the key to some great Bacon, Letture, and Tomato sandwiches which we enjoyed on a recent trip to Reston, Virginia.

I continue to be surprised that are people in the world who do not like tomato sandwiches. Even my own son won't eat them. It is a good thing he is my flesh and blood, or I would have been checked out for not loving tomato sandwiches.

At our house on the coast, there are not many days during tomato season, June 1- December 19 that we don't have a tomato in something. In the heart of summer that something is usually a tomato sandwich of some sort. I even like toasted bologna, cheese, and tomato sandwiches.

Then there are boiled ham sandwiches with Swiss cheese and tomatoes. Tonight we made a pasta dish with grilled Italian sausage, fresh mushrooms, asiago cheese, three cheese spaghetti sauce and of course some fresh tomatoes. It was great on top of some bow tie pasta.

I even enjoy tomatoes in omelets. The tomato scare has not caused us any problems, but we are at the point with our crop that we have to either find more people to take some of them or start canning or freezing some.

We are very proud of the tomatoes since they are the best tomatoes that we have ever grown and by far the earliest. We have already enjoyed them for a over a month. I just put another tomato plant in the ground last week with the hopes that we will have fresh tomatoes into January.

Who knows what will happen? I still would really like to beat my December 19 date from last year. It is a noble quest, fresh homegrown tomatoes from June 1 until January 15.

So if you see me around, be careful, I might slip a bag of tomatoes into your car.

The great coastal tomato crop

It is hard for me to not smile a little when I read about tomatoes disappearing from store shelves.

I took this picture about a week ago. It is a great start on our 2008 tomatoes especially considering the challenges others are facing. It is a very tough year even for small growers.

Tomatoes are among the easiest of vegetables to grow. They also have great diversity and taste if you grow them yourself.

We had practically given up growing tomatoes in Roanoke, Virginia where the deer seem to have defeated all attempts at having gardens.

With the well drained sandy soil of North Carolina's coastal plane, I just dig a hole and put in some top soil, Ozmocote, and water liberally. At some point I have to attack the nasty hornworms, and stake the plants.

All in all it is agreat way to help the food budget. My plants went into the ground on April 3 this year.

It did not seem long until June 1 when we picked the first tomato. We have been getting them in quantity for about ten days.

Maybe it is all the years I spent on the farm, but there is something very satisfying about bringing in a great crop even if it is just tomatoes.

Just tomatoes, what am I saying. There is no better use for bread than in a tomato sandwich.

I didn't know about the little micro-climate beside our garage when I bought the property, but I am glad it is there.

I know that my competition in the tomato contest is already hungry for the next year, and I think that I have the spot that will defeat these pretenders to the tomato crown.

A nice to have rainy day

Last Monday we had a rainy day.

Many of the places that I have lived that would not be a big deal.

When we lived in Nova Scotia, rainy days were pretty common. In fact I can remember a rainy month or two. There were even times when I was in Atlantic Canada that maybe we should invest in an ark.

If you work hard outside, a rainy or even snowy day can be a welcome change in your routine especially if you have been living in the Southeast this year, where rain has been very scarce.

Here along the Southern Outer Banks we have been lucky this summer with enough rain to prevent any problems. Fifteen to twenty miles inland, people have not been that lucky.

Still we haven't had any days that I remember since spring when it rained for a whole day.

I took advantage of the recent wet weather and cleaned out a lot of papers. I will not proclaim that cleaning out papers is a lot of fun, but I will admit that it is something you have to do.

Otherwise you can be overwhelmed with paper. The idea that a paperless office is just around the corner seems to have receded somewhat.

It appears to have died under the weight of paper.  Some of my past when I was a real estate agent  seems to be all paper. From faxes to contracts, I appear to have been swimming in paper.

For a while I tried to get away with using my Macintosh for real estate. My twenty years at Apple left me pretty comfortable with a Mac but unfortunately no company makes a forms generation package for NC real estate so I ended up buying a Windows machine. You have be able to generate all that real estate paper at a moment's notice.

If you think paper has disappeared from the business world, just try buying a house. It will be good for the economy and will convince anyone that we have a long way to go before we can dispense with paper.

In addition to giving me a chance to clean out my papers, the rain has helped to keep my tomato plants going. I did not have any idea that these three plants would last so long and produce so many tomatoes. We will be eating tomatoes from our three plants well into January.

Unless tonight turns out to be very cold, I fully expect to pick my first December tomato tomorrow. Once I have done that I am going to pull up the tomato plants, and watch all the green ones turn red in January.  I doubt there will be much more tomato ripening weather anytime soon so I can get the vines out of here before it becomes cold outside.