Charles Fox-Smith and his plentiful harvest of onions
It’s raining again as I write this. Biblically. This week, the first tropical storm of 2026, named Arthur, has visited our part of the state and, judging by the days of rain, Arthur likes what he sees enough to stick around for a long, wet, nap. Since Monday, something like six inches of rain have fallen on St. Francisville, leaving the parking lot in front of our office behind the Magnolia Café looking like a marina, and the area’s impressive population of cats marooned on steps and lawn chairs, regarding the rising water with dismay.
While I enjoy a summer rainstorm as much as the next person, with a good book and a screened-in porch to sit on, one can have too much of a good thing. At home in my vegetable garden, the rain has wrought havoc on the early summer crops. The eggplants aren’t flowering, the peppers are succumbing to some sort of blight, and what looked set to be a bumper crop of tomatoes have all split open. Sure, this is a source of mild disappointment for me, but spare a thought for Louisiana’s stoic produce farmers, people like Sugartown watermelon farmer Jason Green, for whom a season with anything other than an average amount of rain makes bringing the summer produce we cherish to backyard barbecues and picnic tables, just that much harder.
Things are all right for some. This summer our son, Charles, whose senior year of college is fast approaching, has somehow stumbled into a job working on an organic vegetable farm in Maine. During the past couple of weeks, he’s been sending photos of cornucopic mounds of onions, arugula, Swiss chard, and other leafy, cool-climate crops I can only dream of growing here. The photos arrive with requests for recipes (apparently a side benefit of working on a vegetable farm is the opportunity to take home produce deemed too lumpy or misshapen for sale). Having found himself surrounded by free vegetables (not to mention vegan hippie farm girls), Charles, an enterprising cheapskate whose culinary predilections have hitherto been those of your typical twenty-one-year-old Southern boy (steak, sausage biscuits, Sonic), has developed a sudden interest in vegetarian cuisine. “Hey Dad, how do you make tomato pasta sauce?” read a text that arrived the other afternoon, with photos of fresh-picked onions, garlic, Roma tomatoes, peppers, and other ripe, somewhat deformed vegetables. I sent him various options, feeling the wistful pleasure of standing aside while your kids begin to discover how much the wider world has to offer for themselves.
Meanwhile, here below the thirtieth parallel, the waterlogged progress of Tropical Storm Arthur across South Louisiana serves as a reminder that it’s time to review our hurricane preparation amid what’s shaping up to be a wetter-than-usual summer. It seems like everyone in the Gulf South has their own hurricane prep ritual. In our household, the first sign of a named storm is my wife’s cue to rush out and buy an eclectic range of storm supplies that usually includes rice, dried beans, bottled water, Pringles, York peppermint patties, battery-operated lanterns, and gin, faster than you can say “cone of uncertainty.” I’m not complaining. Many years ago, as Hurricane Gustav set its sights on South Louisiana, she commanded me to go to the hardware store and buy a generator. We argued about this for several days, while the cone of uncertainty around Gustav’s path became progressively less uncertain. Eventually of course, I went to the hardware store and bought that generator, which we proceeded to run around the clock for the next two weeks. This is why I am still married. So, this weekend, I think I’ll stock up on generator gas, then harvest the remainder of my bulging, split tomatoes to make, and freeze, a bumper crop of homemade tomato sauce. That way, we’ll be able to continue enjoying the halcyon days of summer, long after summer is gone.
