Year of Spiritual Thinking: Lúnasa

First Tomato! Celebrating the Harvest

through green leaves  
first luscious fruit beckons  
tomato red

When the first ripe tomato appears in my garden—whether I have one tomato plant or half a dozen—I always celebrate with a simple harvest feast. I pinch back my basil plants and make basil pesto, and then quarter the freshly harvested tomato and smear each juicy quarter with pesto. It’s a delicious and uber-local way to celebrate the harvest!

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Hello Friends,

It’s prime harvest time in my garden, and I’m belatedly celebrating the Celtic cross-quarter holiday of Lúnasa with my own “First Tomato” feast.

Growing Tomatoes

Every year, I grow several varieties of heritage tomato plants from seed, partly because I love the flavor of homegrown tomatoes and prefer the old-fashioned varieties, and partly because there is nothing more likely to lift my spirits in late winter than the sight and smell of baby tomato plants on a south-facing windowsill, sipping sunlight and growing toward summer.

I always seed in basil at the same time, because basil and tomato are a natural pairing in the kitchen and also in the garden. Both have fragrant leaves that tend to repel grazers, and thrive when planted together.

My windowsill seedling garden, basil in front, tomatoes in back

When the plants have grown big enough—meaning they have several sets of mature leaves, usually by Mother’s Day—I transplant two or three of the several dozen tomato seedlings out into the garden.

Each one goes inside a tomato teepee, a conical structure with vertical, water-filled tubes that acts like a mini-greenhouse to protect the tender young plants from the extremes of freezing nights and hot daytimes, and the wind that scours the high desert in spring. Then I plant one or two basil plants right next to that shelter where the stored heat will nurture them too.

Tomato teepees in a stock tank garden at a former house

The rest of the tomato seedlings get thinned to the ten strongest, and those I transplant into salvaged paper hot-drink cups (I poke a drainage hole in the bottom first) and given away to friends for their gardens. My friends like getting those young plants!

When the tomato plants grow out of the top of each teepee, I carefully lift the water-filled structure off, and give each plant a three-sided tower for support as they stretch upward and begin to set fruits.

Tomato plants bursting out of the tops of their shelters….

And then I wait, watering the plants every day, checking for flowers and fruits, and watching with some excitement for the first ripe tomatoes.

Lúnasa and the First Tomato Celebration

Usually, the first tomato ripens around August first, the traditional date of Lúnasa (also spelled Lughnasadh and several other variants depending on the particular form of Gaelic). Lúnasa is the Celtic cross-quarter festival of the harvest, and a community feast and celebration day, involving games of skill and strength, often including climbing a nearby mountain, and of course, eating the bounty of summer food.

(“Cross-quarter” means it falls midway between the solstice and the equinox, the “quarters” of the Celtic year.)

In my distant past, what I call BC, as in before cancer and before Richard died, we often had harvest dinners for friends and family around Lúnasa. Now that I live alone and my garden is smaller, I celebrate Lúnasa with my own simple “First Tomato” feast.

I pick that first sun-warmed fruit, cut back the basil growing next to the tomato plant, and make a fresh batch of basil pesto. I quarter the tomato, smear each sweet quarter with pesto and savor the fruits of my edible garden in a salute to summer and the food I grow, powered by sunlight. Yum.

This year, I got a late start on seeding my indoor “farm” with tomato and basil, so I was about two weeks late putting out the plants, and the first tomato ripened this week, instead of at Lúnasa. No matter, I held my First Tomato celebration anyway!

And yesterday, I gave jars of that fresh pesto to several friends. One of them shared the first tomato from a plant I gave her with me and her sister. We smeared that ripe fruit with pesto, and savored sweet and pungent bites of summer.

Basil Pesto

2 cloves garlic  
3/4 cup asiago cheese cubed  
1/2 cup pecans, raw or toasted  
2 cups of basil leaves, packed loosely  
about 1/2 cup olive oil (enough to thin pesto to desired texture)

Drop the garlic cloves into a food processor while it is running to mince the garlic. Turn off the machine, add asiago cheese and pecans and process until the texture of very coarse corn meal. Add basil leaves and pulse until minced. Turn on machine and pour in olive oil in a thin stream until mixture is as thick or thin as you prefer. Spoon into small canning jars to give away or freeze, and eat some immediately on your first ripe tomato.

Start Your Own  Lunasa Celebration

Practice your terraphilia and strengthen your connection with the earth wherever you live by beginning your own Lúnasa tradition. Celebrate your first tomatoes, first peaches, or whatever first food comes in at the beginning of August. (For those in the Southern Hemisphere, celebrate the end of winter and beginning of spring, perhaps with the first flowers….)

Set up a dinner with friends to share dishes from your garden and local farmer’s markets, or simply create your own private observance. However you choose to celebrate, make time to enjoy and express gratitude for the abundance of the season.

Slowing the crazy rush of our lives to observe the seasons, to savor the bounty this Earth provides is a way to nourish our hearts and souls, and reconnect us to what matters most: our roots in the web of life that animates this planet.

Blessings of the season!

Susan