Skip to main content

Tomato Sauce, Anyone?

I'm really trying to follow through with this whole "growing a farm" thing. This week a dear friend of mine gave me 21 tomato plants to take home. Most of them already have tomatoes growing! I brought them home and planted all of them. Some are in pots, and some are in a not-so-tidy row of land I cleared by hand.

Add these to the two tomato plants I already have, and I have 23 tomato plants. That means a whole lotta canning at some point in my future.

Feeling inspired by my gardening, I bought a small tabletop greenhouse. I still have a stack of seeds ready to sprout. I had some great success with the last set until I move the sprouted plants outside. Only one survived, and I have no earthly idea what kind of plant it is.

I never thought I'd reach the point of my life when gardening is fun. But it is. And the more I learn about commercial farming (especially outside of the U.S.) the more determined I am to grow my own fruits and vegetables. In fact, if we really knew the truth about what we don't know, we'd all storm the grocery stores and demand that ALL our produce come from the U.S.

But my current shopping habits are another post altogether.
Labels:

Comments

Christy said…
I dearly wish I could buy all local and organic foods. There is a bill up right now, though, that may make local farming (and alarmists even say backyard gardening) nearly extinct. How sad.
I'm loving the gardening thing too, as you read. And we definitely have plenty of tomatoes going! I'll have to learn the canning deal too - but maybe next season :)
7:20 PM
frabjouspoet said…
I didn't know about that bill. Why would someone even consider that? We have a LOT of farmers around here (and I work with many farmers' wives) who have told me all sorts of stories about the way produce is treated and grown in other countries. I absolutely REFUSE to buy anything that's not from the US. That limits me, but it's so worth it.
4:35 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Busy Days Ahead

It's been a busy week for me. I left my house at 4:30 Monday morning for my drive down south and pulled back in my driveway at 1:20 this morning. The days have been long, too, between working at the new school from 7:30 until 3:00 or 4:00 and then working at the new place until 9:00 or 10:00 each night. I now have callouses on my fingers and not one intact finger nail. I think I've also developed a new twitch somewhere on my face. One afternoon this week, I stood in the middle of our new living room and took in the sight of missing drywall, a growing hole in the floor and soaked up my husband's predictions that we still won't be ready to paint by the weekend. All I wanted to do was cry. All I felt was nothingness. Numbness. Anyone who has ever reached the point of numbness knows that it's scarier than feeling like you're falling apart. It's one step beyond feeling like you're falling apart. I couldn't help but wonder just what we had gotten ourselves
5 comments
Read more

The Carnival

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon here in southwest Florida, although still a bit too warm for my November tastes. I'm learning to enjoy my weekends with as much unstructured and unscheduled time as possible. Last Saturday was a delightful unstructured day. A new friend of mine (the one from the Everglades excursion) and I went to a local carnival. Now, here's the thing...I LOVE carnivals. The food. The people. The rides. The lights. I can easily spend an entire day wandering through the crowds. He's no carnival slouch. The first thing we did was walk through the entire place, scoping out the rides. Then the fun began. We rode almost every ride there (except for the kiddie attractions and the broken Tornado). The Wild Claw. The Scrambler. The Orbiter. The Space Oddysey. The Swings. The Pharaoh's Fury. The Ferris Wheel. The Giant Slide. The Haunted House. The Avalanche. It was all good. How can you top a ride that uses centrifugal force to plaster your body against
2 comments
Read more

Stranger Obligations

I had to make a few difficult decisions this week. At least, they were difficult for me. I wish I could be the kind of person who completely makes decisions based on his/her own needs and wants and boldly moves through life with unabashed freedom from how our choices affect others. But I'm not built like that. I had placed an ad for my former stray. I felt like it was time to find her a more permanent home because so much in my life right now is uncertain. One person answered the ad, but she did not seem like a good fit, and I gave up further thought. This week I received another response. As long as this person is telling the truth, it's an ideal situation for the dog. Yet, I had a strange feeling and could not sort out whether or not it was my intuition kicking in or that fact that I actually like the dog and don't want to see her go. In the end, I decided that it was in my own (and my Winnipeg's) best interest for her to stay with us through the summer. (I seri
5 comments
Read more