Farm to Table

July 9 2020

Tomato season,

and the local bounty has appeared in the stores

like an annual rite of passage.

Field grown

in the long days of our short summer

red and plump and redolent.

I tried to grow tomatoes once.

But between my neglect, the bugs, and the vagaries of weather

they were hard and small and sparse.

So my gratitude to the farmer.

Who, I suspect, is probably some conglomerate

who assembled the land

to avoid paying taxes
as well as maximize their profits.

Where undocumented workers

who speak mostly Spanish

cultivate and harvest the crop.

Or where clever machines

wheel up and down the rows,

so nothing is ever touched

by human hands.

Which I refuse to believe,

stubbornly sticking

to my bucolic image of the family farm,

sturdy people

who are salt of the earth

and take pride in what they do.

Who pick together

and lovingly assemble their vegetable boxes

and wooden baskets of fruit.

Row upon row

of juicy tomatoes

that were grown close to home,

ripening in the sun

and smelling of mother earth.

This typically happens here in August. As it has every year I can remember. The tomatoes are often sold in those light wooden baskets, and you want to be sure to pick through them to see if the bottom layer is bad. I used to absolutely love this time of year: tomatoes that actually tasted and smelled like the real thing.

Except they haven't, lately. They seem so much more like the industrial tomatoes we get trucked in from California and Mexico the rest of the year. We nostalgically imagine the family farm; but really, how many small farms are left? They can't compete. They've been forced to sell.

Tomatoes genetically engineered or bred for transport and storage and efficient growth; not for taste or smell. We are addicted to cheap food. We get what we pay for.