“Is that tomato fresh”, asked the third grader who found me on the front porch last September sitting behind several pots of tomato plants with tomatoes ripening on the vine. She clutched a school fundraising flyer in her hand. She was enchanted by the jungle of plants on the porch and how it felt to be behind them looking out at the nearby street. It was good to hear that she knew “fresh” food was important but disturbing to realize she had no idea what it meant. “It’s no wonder we are having a country-wide health crisis”, I thought. I sent her home with a perfectly ripe brandy-wine tomato in a paper bag to share with her mother. I didn’t even try to explain organic, or heirloom and just hoped that when she got home her mother let her eat a tomato from a stranger and that her tongue delighted in the flavor of a just-picked fruit.
(This photo is from a couple years ago. My tomatoes aren’t quite ripe yet.)
You can find more images from this week’s Weekly Photo Challenge here.
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Lovely post and I envy your having tomatoes! We have had too much rain and mine are underdeveloped. Harvest season for them will be over before they are finished growing. Even then, I’m allergic to them but it’s fun growing and sharing them.
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How nice of you to grow tomatoes for others to eat! That is a bummer you are allergic to them.
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That’s FRESH!! 😉
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Ha! Ha! Yes it is and I”m now starting to pick this year’s tomatoes. YUM!
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Sweet story paired with a beautiful photo.
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Thank you!
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Great story… and, yes, a lot of people live in some kind of “food desert” with very limited access to good quality fresh produce. There was a wonderful story recently on urban guerrilla gardening in South Los Angeles here: http://www.realfarmacy.com/the-unfortunate-reality-of-food-deserts-and-how-we-can-beat-them/ Strangely, even in rural areas, we have food deserts. I live in the mountains of VA and if you don’t have a garden here and can’t afford transportation to a supermarket an hour away, you end up buying packaged foods at the local Dollar General.
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Tomato is my school’s mascot 🙂
Like the pic.
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That’s an interesting school mascot! 🙂
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Love the companion text…and the Tom looks good enough to eat!
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Thank you! It makes me anxious for this year’s tomatoes to start coming in. So good right off the vine. 🙂
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Great photo of a gorgeous tomato and a nice story too.
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Thank you!
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That looks amazing!!
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Makes you want to take a bite, doesn’t it?
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Love the photo but love the story even more! I mentored a teenager here and took her out to lunch one day. She had never eaten any of the vegetables on the menu and was embarassed so just ordered the salad I ordered. It was a rude awakening for me about how some people live and what we take for granted.
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You are so right, Tina. I bet you both taught each other many things!
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