« Sam Writes: Homegrown Tomatoes »

“Money Can’t Buy True Love and Homegrown Tomatoes” by artist Jan Yatsko

Tracking my thoughts out in the field can be a curvy, jumpy, and lengthy trail of mental activity as I pick, set down, collect, sort… sometimes I need to redirect more of that energy to focusing on the picking, sorting, etc., but constantly being around super fantastic veggies and fruits gets me thinking.

A few years ago I read an article that traced the plight of that infamous supermarket tomato. You know the one: perfectly red, quite firm, almost entirely tasteless but cheap enough to justify, and probably from Mexico. As I read, my feelings about that supermarket tomato went from reluctant satisfaction, to undirected frustration and sadness, and finally to ridiculousness, the ultimate realization that though the tomato may be in front of me, I don’t really wish it so. But I still want a tomato! I had to confront myself and ask, what’s the alternative? I came up with two options: homegrown or from a nearby farm, and you could extend “nearby” to anywhere closer than Mexico if the local season isn’t producing tomatoes and you’re fiending. That got me to pondering the difference between homegrown and local, and what we’re producing here on the farm.

Guy Clark says money can’t buy homegrown tomatoes, so in that respect we’re not growing homegrown tomatoes. However, I am positive we’re growing the next best thing, just because you have to buy them. But is an exchange of money between producer and consumer the only thing separating our tomatoes from their homegrown glory? If we ignore that money thing, we can agree that they’re picked ripe, and they look, feel, smell, and taste oh so similarly to homegrown tomatoes. So much so that you should be able to fool 999 out of 1000 people at your dinner table about the source of the tomatoes in their salad, stew, juice, eggs, gravy, or beans (pinto or navy), as long as they haven’t noticed that you don’t have any tomato plants. As for that one person you’re not fooling: it’s you.

Everyone says, “Hmm, mmmm, wwooooww, nice tomatoes, these must be homegrown!” You reply, “Must they be? What makes a tomato homegrown? Is it simply their look, feel, smell, and taste?”  And you all launch off along a trail of exploring the intangibles of homegrown tomatoes. Some points you might come across along the way: your hands are clean now (maybe), but they were such a bugger to clean after spending an hour pruning and training your tomato plants that you had remnants of that strange green gunky crust* on your fingers for the next two days; you’ve been having nightmares that you pruned off the leader on all your plants and you will be stuck with tiny plants; you haven’t slept properly since you got the blood of a few Colorado potato beetles on your hands; you’ve been sleeping much better since you decided to squish what must surely be the entire army of Colorado potato beetles, hopefully erasing their existence altogether and easing your conflicted, usually-nonviolent mind; you’re in complete awe of how many damn Colorado potato beetles there are only a few days after that massacre; there is a pile of rotting tomatoes just outside of your garden under your neighbor’s hedges. And the trail continues to reveal itself well into dessert…

The current reality has it that all of us are not going to produce all of our own food every year, which is why farms like The Sunshine Farm exist. Wherever you fit along the spectrum of not growing any food to producing most of your own food, we try to fill the gaps in your diet. Additionally, if you want to try your hands at homegrown, we provide starter plants at the beginning of the summer to ease you into the journey. That certainly doesn’t make the difference between homegrown and local any clearer, but who cares! This trail is getting long, and it’s all good food anyways, which is really all we wanted in the first place. Time to relax, contentment is already here.

*For the interested, more about that strange green gunky crust you can’t seem to completely wash off of your skin after handling your tomato plants:  http://www.growingformarket.com/articles/green-powder-on-tomato-plants