life in a red state 197different tomato varieties as they begin to come in: two Green Zebras,
four gorgeous Jaune Flammés, one single half- pound Russian Black. I
note that the latter wins our summer’s first comparative taste test—a good
balance of tart and sweet with strong spicy notes. I describe it in my jour-
nal the way an oenophile takes notes on a new wine discovery. On the
same day, I report that our neighbor wants to give away all her Russian
Blacks on the grounds they are “too ugly to eat.” I actually let her give me
a couple.
As supply rises, value depreciates. Three weeks after the First To-
mato! entry in my journal, I’ve dropped the Blessed Event language and
am just putting them down for the count: “10 Romas today, 8 Celebrity,
30 Juliet.” I continue keeping track so we’ll know eventually which varie-
ties performed best, but by early August I’ve shifted from numbers to
pounds. We bring in each day’s harvest in plastic grocery sacks that we
heave onto a butcher’s scale in our kitchen, jotting down the number on a
notepad before moving on to processing.
At this point in the year, we had officially moved beyond hobby scale.
My records would show eventually whether we were earning more than
minimum wage, but for certain we would answer the question that was
largely the point of this exercise: what does it take, literally, to keep a fam-
ily fed? Organizing the spring planting had been tricky. How many pump-
kins does a family eat in a year? How many jars of pickles? My one area of
confidence was tomatoes: we couldn’t have too many. We loved them
fresh, sliced, in soups and salads, as pasta sauces, chutneys, and salsa. I’d
put in fi fty plants.
In July, all seemed to be going according to plan when we hauled in
just over 50 pounds of tomatoes. In August the figure jumped to 302
pounds. In the middle of that month, our neighbor came over while I was
canning. I narrowed my eyes and asked her, “Did I let you give me some
tomatoes a few weeks ago?”
She laughed. She didn’t want them back, either.
Just because we’re overwhelmed doesn’t mean we don’t still love them,
even after the first thrill wears off. I assure my kids of this, when they
point out a similar trend in their baby books: dozens of photos of the fi rst
smile, first bath, first steps... followed by little evidence that years two