Fresh from Wellspring Charitable Gardens - July 23, 2026

Fresh Today… Tomatoes, Peppers, Potatoes or Eggplant, Summer Squash, Cucumbers, Carrots, Chives, Garlic, Basil, Pluots, Grapes, Peaches, Plums & Melons (Due to weather, Melon ripeness is variable, hard to determine w/o cutting)

Using your Produce… by Julie Moreno

Today’s recipe is my favorite salsa. It’s perfect when we have so many tomatoes available. I char the tomatoes and vegetables, then blend everything in a food processor or blender. I like to remove the tomato skins halfway through cooking. When the tomatoes start to cook the skins will naturally pull away from the flesh and you can simply pull the skins off then continue to cook the tomatoes until they are blistered.

Roasted Tomato Salsa

5-6 medium tomatoes

3/4 cup coarsely chopped onion

1-2 hot peppers, stems and seeds removed

2 cloves garlic

1 cup cilantro, leaves and small stems

1 tablespoon lemon or lime juice

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

*  Preheat your broiler to high. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the stem end (it doesn’t matter if you cut them lengthwise or crosswise). In a foil lined 9x13 inch pan, place garlic, onions, peppers on the bottom and the tomato halves on top with the cut side up. Place the baking sheet under the broiler and broil for about 10 minutes until the tomato is charred. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and flip the tomatoes over. Remove the skins from the tomatoes and then broil in the oven for another 10 minutes, until the tomatoes are blistered. Remove the vegetables from the oven and let cool slightly. In a food processor or blender, blend the roasted vegetables, cilantro, lemon juice, salt and pepper, pulsing to combine about 1 minute. Serve with tortilla chips.

Fresh Roasted Tomato Sauce

Place as many cherry and regular tomatoes as will fit into a roasting pan coated with parchment, cooking spray, or olive oil. Sprinkle as many peeled garlic cloves as desired among them, adding a peeled onion and basil or oregano leaves now or later if desired.  Sprinkle with sea or kosher salt and roast at 400 degrees for 45-60 minutes, depending on how thick you want your sauce.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool.  Remove any seeds and skin, if desired (charred skins add a nice smokey flavor), and pour the entire pan into a blender.  Pulse for chunky or blend on high and strain for a sauce more refined. Add salt, pepper, and more fresh herbs to taste.  Enjoy this fresh roasted tomato sauce on your favorite pasta or freeze for later use.  To water bath can, omit the oils, garlic, and onion.  

Sweet Salsa…

Melons make the perfect base for salsa instead of tomatoes. Their sweet and tender flesh goes well with onion and peppers and crisp cucumbers. Serve this with chips or as a topping to grilled fish or chicken.

Melon Salsa

½ melon, peeled and seeds           

      removed, finely diced              

1 cucumber, peeled and seeds     

    removed, finely diced                

¼ cup finely diced red                    

    onion or shallots                         

2 tablespoons chopped 

     fresh basil or cilantro

1 sweet pepper, minced

1 hot pepper, minced (optional)

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

 ¼ teaspoon salt

*  Mix everything and eat immediately as a topping to chicken or fish or as topping on salad.

Metaphors of Soil and Soul…

The Uncomfortable Way to Comfort

Cindi J Martin

My mom was one of nine children born to sharecroppers working Santa Rosa farms during the 1920’s and 30’s. Those Depression years were inexpressibly hard for her, so our venture into farming called forth unspeakably sore memories of her poverty, deprivation, and shame. Casting dark shadows long into her old age were painful memories of her dad slaughtering, then butchering, beloved rabbits and chickens to feed his large family. Like many of her generation, she was told to simply get over her hurt and move on.

Few families in modern urban and suburban landscapes now grow vegetables or raise livestock, let alone slaughter and butcher animals to feed the family. The thought is abhorrent. Ironically, our children are entertained by untold hours of dramas depicting wanton violence and brutal deaths, but they are shielded from viewing the lifeless body of a loved one or beloved pet. In so doing, we withhold a natural occasion to impart an essential emotional and relational skill: healthy grieving of painful loss. Encounters with death acquaint children with landscapes of sorrow that are native to life. In farming, we traverse this familiar terrain often. We process disappointment, loss, death, and deferred hope throughout the seasons and the life cycles of our garden plants and livestock. Children, and sometimes adults, need support to embrace, rather than avoid or deny, the intense and disturbing feelings natural to loss and grief. That is the task of mourning.

Years back I faced a hideous but far too common farm reality. Marauding raccoons savaged our Wellspring chickens late one night, slaughtering 21 of 25 laying hens. Going to gather eggs from “the ladies” the next morning, I stumbled upon blood-stained feathers, torn wings, twisted legs, and headless corpses scattered outside the coop and throughout the nearby fields. Horrified, I fell headlong into grieving – expressing shock, denial, anger, sadness, and guilt (aka the “what if’s”). Looking back, I am grateful for my garden friends who let me – uncensored - express the raw feelings that described the raw carnage that had broken my heart. They didn’t try to talk me through or cheer me out of the sorrow. They embraced me in it, joining my pain with their tears and listening to the horror of my loss without judgment or rebuke.  That is grieving – working through the loss despite the pain. 

We adults may think children or other adults morbid for wanting to know details about the death of a loved one, but that is precisely what is needed to work through the pain of grief. It’s counterintuitive, but acknowledging, expressing, and embracing the broken heart heals it. We get stuck in grief not by focusing on it for a time but by denying or avoiding it altogether.  We are told in Psalm 23 that the path to comfort leads “through the Valley of the Shadow of Death” - not around it, over it, under it, but through it with the LORD. Jesus confirms the way: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”