Nature & Science
Island waters are filled with bluefish, especially now. Striped bass fishing is sketchy and the bonito are only now arriving, but for Vineyard and Nantucket commercial and recreational anglers, there is one certainty: the bluefish are here.
Capt. Tom Mleczko of Nantucket reports bluefishing is good this summer for him, as good as it was last year. He fishes in a 29-foot Hawk called Priscilla J.
Prices at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market have long caused shoppers to go into sticker shock when reaching for a bouquet of sunflowers or a bushel of local fingerling potatoes. Bargains have always been few and far between, yet customers continued to arrive before the gates open at nine to snatch up the best of the Vineyard’s hand-picked local produce.
Michael Pollan knows the rules of the potluck.
Although he is the featured speaker at tonight’s Slow Food Martha’s Vineyard potluck dinner in West Tisbury, the New York Times bestselling author will be bringing the requisite dish to share. “I’m singing for my supper,” he said from his Aquinnah home.
The 22nd annual two-day monster shark tournament in Oak Bluffs ended Saturday with a total of 27 sharks caught and submitted, the largest of which was a 399-pound thresher. The team on the Waterbury caught the shark Friday, beating the other 200 boats in the tournament. Their prize was an $80,000 boat.
By LYNNE IRONS
What’s up with the salmonella on tomatoes? I have several thoughts on the subject. Bear with me as they are somewhat disjointed. First of all, big farmers are plowing up their fields as the market is so bad and they are trying to get another crop of something else into the ground while there is still time.
Morning glory hallelujah!
Walt Whitman might have sung the praise of this flower since he noted that “a morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”
Another famed poet, Henry David Thoreau, concurred. In his tribute he observed that this flower is “well named morning glory. Its broad, bell and trumpet-shaped flowers, faintly tinged with red, are like the dawn itself.”
Almanac
A comprehensive guide to weather and tides on the Island.
Vineyard Gardener
I guess this past week weather-wise is called a January thaw. We did not really experience it the last several years as December was unseasonably warm.
Farm & Field
Beige and brown and tan and black, with horns spiraled or semicircular or in undulating waves, a legion of goats marched up the hill toward us, bleating in anticipation of fresh grass and leaves.