It’s early November and time to clean up the garden. I spent a few hours yesterday cutting tomato vines and pulling the wire cages out of the ground for storage until next summer. The ground around the garden beds was littered with gnarly, ropey vines that had been tiny, tender shoots just a few months ago. I gathered a couple of bushels of green tomatoes and a few red ones, mostly the little Amish paste heirlooms. Then the vines went into the wheel barrow and out into the field beside the garden to be burned.
Today I started the process of turning all the beds with a shovel, shaking the dirt off the weeds before throwing them into a pile. Next week, a layer of straw and manure goes on the beds, and as soon as I get a couple of hours in with a rake, the beds will get blanketed for winter with a thick pile of leaves. While turning the soil over, I found a few sweet potatoes that had hidden from me when the potatoes were harvested a few weeks ago. Then I came across a few stray onions, and in another bed, some Yukon Gold potatoes. I realized I had just uncovered dinner!
I brought my basket of garden dregs into the kitchen and washed and sliced them. They went into a roasting pan along with a few of the Amish paste tomatoes that I left whole. I tossed them with half a cup of olive oil and a quarter cup of balsamic, a shake of sea salt and some ground pepper. Then a few sprigs of fresh rosemary scattered on top just for the heavenly smell. They baked, covered, in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degress and then another twenty minutes uncovered. Some kind of insanely delicious magic happens between the sweet sugars in the roasting tomatoes and the starches of the potatoes. I forgot to do it, but it would have been even better if I’d thrown in a few cloves of garlic.
Where else but in your own backyard can you literally dig up some dinner by surprise?
On Walnut Ridge 
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