playing n the dirt

In a little over a week Fort Lupton Colorado will celibrate it’s 100th annual Tomato Days Harvest Festival.  Actually, somewhere along the way, the name got changed to Trapper Days, but it still started out as Tomato Days.  I am in the mist of celibrating my own Tomato Days.  I have never had a crop like this and am begining to get buired in tomatos. 

I have decided that whatever I pick today and tomorrow I will take to work on Friday and any and everyone can help themselves.  A good friend and fellow gardener tells me that by sharing my crop I will be putting out into the universe good tomato karma.  I think he is probably right.

For vegetable gardeners this is a great time of year.  Fresh vegetables are ready to eat or will be very soon.  At our house we have eaten all the first round of the sweet peas and spinach.  We’ve been eating green beans, carrots, lettuce and zuchinni for weeks now and there are many more yet to ripen.  The cucumbers are already as long as fingers.  While watering the peppers I’ve spotted some pretty big yellow ones and we’ve had fried green tomato’s while waiting for them to ripen.  Yep, all the hard work is paying off in some of the best tasting organic vegetables ever and they are all right out my back door. 

I plant a pretty good sized vegetable garden each year.  My only problem is that there is just me and my husband, so like gardeners everywhere I always end up with to much.  That’s why I’m known as the produce lady at work.  What we don’t eat right away, or what I can’t keep up with canning or freezing I take to work.  I started taking actual vegetables today.  About a month ago I took in over 50 tomatoe plants that I had grown from seed.  

My husband keeps telling me I should charge and not just give them away, but then it would seem to much like work.  Besides, I like watching things grow, so I just keep planting them.  The recent concern over tainted tomatoes and peppers actually seems to have more friends, neighbors and co-workers lined up for fresh organic vegetables and I’ll be more than glad to provide all I can.