Harvest Time, Finally

It's been over a couple of weeks since the last post, but that doesn't mean things have been slow. Farmville has required watering twice a week lately because the warm weather finally arrived. That coupled with the almost nonstop wind out our way has made for some thirsty plants. While I water, I've been harvesting the earlier planted stuff like onions, garlic and potatoes. The top picture is garlic and it's not Elephant garlic, though the bulb size would make you think it is. I have no issue with Elephant garlic other than it's too mild for my taste buds. Also, as someone who has historically had issues with vampires and werewolves, weak garlic could let those two groups of evil-doers get the upper hand and then Farmville chores would really fall behind this summer. I put a quarter in the picture for reference. The white onions in the next picture are also much larger than I expected. I usually plant onions and garlic in November and harvest around this time of year. These were planted his past February, so I was expecting very few large sizes since they missed a couple months of growing time. I think the long, cool spring weather helped with the large bulb sizes. I put an older picture in here so you can see the progress.




The next set of pictures are the tomatoes, including the planting picture. Some of the varieties are almost five feet tall now and have double rebar stakes to keep them from falling over. The first ones picked were an heirloom yellow roma. The fruit (and the plant) are very small but still loaded with tomatoes. Some of the red varieties are beginning to ripen too and I will be fortunate to have vine-ripened tomatoes every day. Believe it or not, I never get tired of having them daily and have had quite a few others tell me they are on the same page too. Since the lateness of the tomatoes has more than likely contributed to me not being able to think of any good stories to write about on this blog update, I'll just ramble about a few random things that come to mind about tomatoes and call it good for now.

• One of the best treats after working in the hot sun all day is to eat a fully ripe tomato washed down with an ice cold beer. Makes all the hard work worth it.
• Speaking of treats, the first BLTs I make with these tomatoes will have home cured bacon I made from a whole pork belly last December. The producer is right here in Yolo county and sells at local farmers' markets. Should be a great combination.
• My brother and I used to make BLTs with cherry tomatoes. It was a lot of work cutting 20 or so in half and arranging on the sandwich, but well worth it. Plus, cherry tomatoes were what we had and as kids, you don't look at that as a reason to have something else for lunch, especially if the other thing you have is bacon.
• In medieval times, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous. Some say this is because the lead from the pewter plates in use at that time was leached out by the acidic tomatoes and poisoned people. Others say it's because tomatoes are in the nightshade family, which includes plants with poisonous fruit.
• The first tomatoes to ripen in Farmville were actually consumed over four hundred miles away. We'll have to work on keeping our "customer base" closer to the project (for many reasons) but there were special circumstances this time.
• This year, I might get around to an experiment I've been meaning to do for a few decades now. That is to use tomato hornworms for fishing bait. They are big and colorful, so the fish would have no problem seeing them. Also, not many fish are able to freely wander around tomato plants, so they have probably always wondered what these big, ugly worms taste like. I might just discover the next big thing in sport fishing.

OK, that's about all I can think of to torture the readers with for this post. There are a few other things starting to ripen as well. We have picked yellow zucchini, cucumbers, and basil too. The sweet corn is probably less than two weeks away and maybe a couple of melons will be ready right after the corn starts. Before we know it, there will be enough produce around here to feed an army. Since I have a small army of kids that seem to like my cooking, it's getting close to the "Meal of Epic Proportion" time. Might even have to do a few of them to use all these things up. Stay tuned...