From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: the significance of scale
Followup-To: rec.gardens
Summary: marvelous fresh tomatoes
Organization: lsa, outil, stanford, osu,...
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 02:38:03 GMT

jacques and i were working our back from bloomington, indiana, to
columbus, ohio (iu-to-osu), this morning, by back roads, the trip out
yesterday having involved many wearisome, nearly motionless,
quarter-hours in road construction on I-70.  the weather was gorgeous,
the fields were green (ok, a little repetitive: corn, corn, soybeans,
sorghum, soybeans, corn, soybeans, corn, sorghum,...), it was pleasant
to drive with little traffic on roads that actually went up and down
and had serious curves in them, and we were looking for *real tomatoes*.

(last sunday j and i drove out with two friends to a garden near
circleville, ohio, to look at the specialties of the house, hostas and
ornamental grasses - neither of which any of the four of us grows -
and buy other plants entirely, and on the way back we searched for a
farm market with real tomatoes.  what we saw instead were things that
had been picked green and had "ripened" to an odd shade of pink, and
other things that were deep red and squooshy, clearly overripe.  back
at home, after the month of rain and the weeks of autumnal chill in
august, we were getting a couple of cherry tomatoes a day and one or
two full-sized numbers a week.  so were we on the prowl for the real
thing.)

on the left along a two-lane country road there appeared a barn with
piles of bright squashes and corn outside it and a big sign mentioning
TOMATOES in a prominent way, several times.  so we pulled over,
unfolded ourselves from the toyota and past the dubious yellow dog and
the playful tricolor kitten, and found the tomatoes.

there were two boxes, with eight or so respectable tomatoes in each,
plus two small bags with very small but ripe fruits in them.

then the woman of the farm appeared, saying she had more to offer.
went away, returned with another box like the two we'd already seen.
we found a dozen really nice tomatoes.

"y'know", j said, "we hardly got any tomatoes this year."

"yeah," i added, "the rains and then the cold.  we had six plants, and
they just barely survived.  but we're still getting a few fruits."

"oh," she responded, with great cheer, while she weighed and priced
our tomatoes.  "we had twenty thousand plants, and half of them
drowned in the rains, and then most of the rest didn't bear in the
cold.  but a lot of ohioans are coming to buy over here now, so we
have good business.  right now i'm going to go and pick the last crop
for this year."

all this with a calm briskness and a friendly smile.  i remembered
what i liked about my half-rural childhood, and also why i chose to go
away and become a member of the cultural elite and terrorize small
children on public streets.  *ten thousand* plants drowned, and (of
course) you go on, what else.

the tomatoes are delicious.  there are not nearly enough of them.  we
want to make marinara sauce, but we can make only salads, precious
salads.

arnold (whose household, like kay klier's, does not entertain
         those ethylene-pink globes offered in supermarkets)



Newsgroups: rec.gardens