A Stroke of Luck

Captain Lucky (photo by S. Anderson)

Green-When-Ripe beefsteak tomatoes like Cherokee Green and Malachite Box are crazy good. Their flavor is out-of-this-world. One reason they are not already featured on menus as prominently as Cherokee Purple and other beefsteak superstars is that they are hard to get from farm to chef efficiently. Because the optimum picking window is marked by very subtle color and softening changes, even the best picking crew will pick large amounts of under-ripe or too-soft tomatoes. The under-ripe ones usually never attain full flavor, and the soft ones can not be boxed, shipped and sold in time.

The super-hero tomato that fixes this problem, and may well bring green-when-ripe beefsteaks to the general populace is Captain Lucky.

Captain Lucky is a relatively new variety bred by Millard Murdock in North Carolina. It is essentially a green-when-ripe tomato that has a bit of surface color and marbling -- and this color gives a small farmers like us the cues we need to harvest it efficiently, at just the right time! We will be selling Captain Lucky fruits this summer, and packets of seeds next fall and winter when we launch the Artisan Seeds online store.

Mareko Fana Diversity

Some Mareko Fana peppers are red. Most are brown.

Mareko Fana comes in many shapes.

The Mareko Fana that Menkir Tamrat brought us two years ago is probably best characterized as a "land race". Some are short, some are long. Most are brown but some are red. Most are thick-fleshed, but some are thin-skinned and delicate.

We are going to be evaluating and playing around with the diversity of our populations for a long time to come. However, in the short term we are selecting for two types of Mareko Fana:

Mareko Fana: Brown and thick-fleshed. Excellent for making Berbere spice. We typically use these mature, and dry them before use.

Mareko Fana Red: Red, thin-skinned and delicate. Fantastic as a frying pepper. We typically pick many of these young, and sell (or eat) them as frying peppers. The taste is mild when they are young.