Fresh From the Garden

I am up to my elbows in tomatoes, folks!  Spaghetti Sauce is in the making and I've been swamped with the bountiful harvest of Amish Paste, Heinz and Rutgers tomatoes...all excellent flavor and what's particularly nice is that they are "determinate" meaning, they all ripen at once.  The Amish Paste and the Heinz are both dry tomatoes--the Heinz more so than the Amish Paste.  The latter is huge!  They are oval shaped, and most average about 3 inches in diameter and about four inches in length, with a pointed end. 

As Garrison Keilor said, "There's two things money can't buy:  love and homegrown tomatoes!  Every night around here, JOTOLR, our dinner consists of homemade cottage cheese, corn on the cob, a hard-cooked egg or two, tomatoes, and green beans and finished off with homemade ice cream for dessert.  We could add a beet or two....and some greens if we're starved,  but usually not. The beets are destined for jars since we just learned about the economics of growing lovely produce!

We have so many beets. So, we decided to call the local Farmer's Market to try to sell a few.  We thought maybe 50 pounds or so???  MM asked how much we'd get for them.  Once the beets were cleaned and topped, they said, the FM would pay us 36 cents a pound.  Needless to say, we weren't willing to drive 100 miles round trip for that pitiful reward.  What does this say about the value of commerical gardening?  The price of food?  Farming in general?

Here's what we saw last night, as we sat watching the evening arrive.