Photo by Rick Cortez

Recipe by Nadia Tamby

I love doing a spin on a traditional cocktail. There are two in this one - using mezcal instead of vodka and adding some Cava to lighten it up. Bloody Marys can often be overpowering and hide the taste of the spirit. Using mezcal adds a nice smoky note to the drink, and the fresh, muddled sweet red tomatoes make it taste completely different from a cocktail that uses canned V8. The addition of a local hot sauce and homemade pickled green tomatoes take this drink to a whole new level.

Mezcal-Cava Bloody Mary

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe red tomato, quartered or cut into large chunks
• 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
• 1 squirt Yellowbird habanero sauce
• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• 2 oz mezcal
• Chilled Cava to top
• Smoked salt to rim glasses
• Mack's special pickled small green tomatoes for garnish or other veggies

Photo by Rick Cortez

Instructions:

Use squeezed limes to moisten rims of glasses and dip into smoked salt.

Place tomato chunks into shaker and muddle to release juices.

Add all remaining ingredients except Cava, add ice and shake well.

Pour into glasses and top with Cava.

Garnish with pickled tomatoes, cucumber slices, etc.

Photo by Rick Cortez

Find more of Rick Cortez's show-stopping photos here, and catch more of Nadia's mouth-watering culinary adventures here. A huge thank you to Van Harrison for letting us use his beautiful home for the shoot!

CSA Box Contents Week of May 29th

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Our Meet the Farmer(s) Happy Hour at the ABGB this past week was quite the success. We loved letting loose with our fellow coworkers, but also having quality time with our beloved CSA community. If you missed it, we are planning another one soon! Stay tuned.

Sweet summertime crops are finally here! We headed to the Sunset Valley Farmers' Market on Mother's Day, caught some great folks, and enjoyed a beautiful day to boot. We will be chockfull of produce this weekend, so get to the markets to stock up on your tomatoes, squash, and cukes!

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Meet Your Farmer(s) Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunset Valley Farmers Market. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunset Valley Farmers Market. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunset Valley Farmers Market. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunset Valley Farmers Market. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunset Valley Farmers Market. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunflower galore. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomato harvest. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomato harvest. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Montana working hard. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Last of the collards. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Farm tour with Becky. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Squash harvest. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Grapes! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Grapes! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Vineyard! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Here at the farm, we equate summer with a limitless abundance of tomatoes, and kids running free from their usual weekday scholarly obligations. We got to thinkin’ about our community’s kiddos, especially as one of our wholesale managers, Mike Mosley, recently participated in Baranoff Elementary Health and Wellness Day. While he taught the second graders about farming, diet, farmer’s markets, and unfamiliar veggies, we wondered... so many kids rely on their school lunch regimen for steady and reliable nourishment, but what happens during the summer?

Baranoff Elementary. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

A student with his veggie loot. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Not surprisingly, when we looked into this summer lunch conundrum, two food champions in town, Austin Independent School District (AISD) and Central Texas Food Bank (CTFB) have the situation covered. AISD is truly revolutionizing the way people think and feel about cafeteria fare, and we can speak from experience, these lunches are truly delectable. They not only source vegetables for salad bars from local farms, but they also showcase produce from Austin farms in their Farm Fresh Fridays series. They really have students ruminating on how and where their food is grown. Through their federally funded Summer Food Service Program, they will serve breakfast and lunch to local youth, age 18 and younger, regardless of if they attend an AISD school during the school year or their economic situation. The program will start in early June and take place at more than 50 of the AISD schools. Pretty cool, eh? Kids just show up and enjoy a nutritious meal without any sort of registration or identification prerequisites. Find the specific locations and times here.

Central Texas Food Bank (CTFB) is also participating in the Summer Food Service Program. CTFB will be using our produce to provide for 18 and under youth in our community at these participating sites. We love our partners, and thoroughly enjoy working with them throughout the year. Whether AISD is trucking out the noms for our Spring Potluck in their Nacho Average Food Truck or sourcing ingredients from us for the most recent Chopped competition atop the downtown Whole Foods, we cherish these integral food players in our fair city and are filled with gratitude to have passionate folks like them changing the Austin food-scape for the better.

Courtesy of the Texas Department of Agriculture website.

CTFB side note: In 2016 we donated 26,100 pounds of fresh vegetables to the Central Texas Food Bank, which provided 31,320 meals. Yeehaw! That’s a lot of meals!

CTFB certificate. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Speaking of kids roaming free and wild in the summer, have you heard about our upcoming U-Pick event? We are planning on having two weekends of tomato pickin’ fun in June complete with a tomato canning workshop with the inimitable Kate Payne! Come out and stock up for those salsas, sauces, and plain ole tomato sandwiches that scream summertime. We can’t wait! Check out our comprehensive events page here.

Tomato U-Pick. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

CSA Box Contents Week of May 22nd

Tomato work. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Your summer tomato supply is sure to be sizable! We've got a fields and fields of quickly ripening 'maters and preparing for this crop's arrival is consuming most of our time! Over the next couple of weeks, you are going to see a deluge of these succulent summertime fruits.

We’ve been in the process of moving our facilities to River Road for some time now. With slow but steady progress, we've finally finished construction on a loading dock, giant cooler, and recently finished a tomato sorting/packing station (see images below!). With the mammoth harvest, the coolers are so full that we had to move two more semis for extra cooler space, can you believe it?!

Check out our weekly blog post for a list of what's hitting markets soon!

Staking tomatoes. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Rainbow chard. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Chard harvest. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sunflower growth. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomato cages. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Red potatoes. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Red potato harvesting. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomato fields forever. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomatoes in progress. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Cabbage. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Zinnias. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Two semis for extra harvest storage. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomato sorting and packing area with the cooler in the background. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

It’s that time of the year when summertime crops are trickling in and springtime crops are coming to an end. A magical time where we are graced with the opportunity to have a brief yet scrumptious taste of two seasons at once. This year has been an amazingly productive year yielding produce of the utmost quality (knock on wood that Mother Nature holds onto that mild temperament). Which brings us great relief with the past two years as a harsh juxtaposition. Our tomato harvest is so massive that the farm crew is daunted by the seemingly endless fields! They’re wondering who’s planning all this ‘mater craziness!? It is hands down the best harvest yet, so get to planning your favorite tomato dishes, we are in for a succulent summer season.

What’s coming to markets soon? Want updates on our market staples? Here’s a quick rundown:

Potatoes. This crop has been outstanding this year.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Squash. Heirloom varieties, yellow squash, zucchini. Everyone get ready! In the next week or two, spaghetti squash and acorn squash will be available as soon as we cure it. Our first butternut squash of the season will coincide with the watermelon harvest, too! CSA members - let us know if you want squash blossoms, we could offer these vibrant delicacies as swap items.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Cucumbers! Pickling cukes and slicing cukes will be flourishing oh so soon.

Eggplant. This crop should be at market in a couple of weeks!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Peppers! They are just starting to get ripe, so they should be ready in a couple of weeks. Limited supply now, but if you CSA folks are interested in them as a swap item, email us and we can harvest them for you!

Okra. We picked some of our first of the season recently... look for it in CSA boxes.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Melons! We have quite the array this year. We will have three types of watermelon: Yellow doll, Tiger baby, and Pata Negra. The melon menu for 2017 is: traditional cantaloupe, mini cantaloupe, Galia (an Israeli melon with a tropical taste and green flesh… it is the earliest harvested melon), Korean melon (yellow striped look), honeydew, canary melon (bright yellow), French Chantenay melon (heirloom melon that is so fragrant and small, it’s like eating dessert). Talk about sweet summertime!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Tomatoes! This is the best tomato crop that we have ever had. The tomato menu for this year is: red slicer tomatoes (perfect for the everyday tomato sandwich, pizza, and/or salsa), three different kinds of Roma (San Marzano, traditional red Roma, and mini yellow Roma. FYI, these mini yellow Romas best eaten fresh, they are so tasty!), 10 different varieties of cherry tomatoes (some heirloom varieties), and plum tomatoes. Although you have probably seen some green tomatoes already in CSA boxes or at the market stands, starting next week, the tomato harvest will really start to arrive. Expect red tomatoes in your CSA box in the coming weeks!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Green beans! Loads of green beans coming in to market.

Fennel and tons of it!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Root crops. A very strong harvest of black Spanish radishes, scarlet turnips, purple top turnips, and daikon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Mint! Tons of it right now.

Celeriac. It’s looking awesome!

Cabbage. A monster harvest of green and red cabbage is headed to markets this weekend!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Onions. We are harvesting and curing them currently. We planted late, so not looking as big as we would like, but this crop is coming!

Beets. They are mammoth! We have your red beets, heirloom Chioggia, and sweet goldens.

Mixed carrot bunch. Our mixed carrot bunch is usually orange, yellow, and white. This year, we tried out a new variety and new colors!

Rainbow carrots are on the way!

A post shared by Brenton Johnson (@farmerbrenton) on May 16, 2017 at 9:58am PDT

Grapes! They are looking amazing. We cannot wait for this harvest.

Sweet potatoes. They are planted, and we are awaiting patiently for the first harvest! We will have the greens before we have the roots.

Zinnias and sunflowers. Adorn your home with summer blooms. You will see them populating and beautifying market stands to a larger degree very soon.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

What crops are at the end of their season? Here are the crops that are unfortunately leaving us for summer respite:

Curly kale. Surprisingly, we still have awesome curly kale. This trend will continue for another couple weeks. If you’re an kale aficionado, get this delectable green at market before it’s gone.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Cilantro and parsley. They are almost done for the season… unfortunately, in this central Texas climate it’s really difficult to maintain tomatoes and cilantro in the same season. We hypothesize that they’ll be around for another week or two.

Broccoli. This quick spring crop is almost done for the season! Such a bittersweet goodbye!

Collard greens. These puppies are at the end of their seasons. They’ll be around for maybe two more weeks.

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

CSA Members! We are trying to keep an eye for hot weather greens that people like… We will have malabar spinach and amaranth. Any greens that you know and would like to have access to at markets? Let us know!

Looking for seasonal and part-time work? Getting out of college and need a job? Check out our jobs page for more information!

PS - We have tons of exciting events coming up in June! Think: workshops galore and the long anticipated return of the Tomato U-Pick at the farm! Check out our events page for more info.