Well, I really did it to myself this time! Not only did I lose my only reliable tomato connection this year but the blight seemed to have wiped out everybody else's crop as well. Earlier this week a friend of mine sent me an on-line trade link for a farmer that was having a U-Pick-It tomato thing on Saturday at what I felt were bargain basement prices. After a couple of emails with him I actually managed to arrange to go out today and raid his crop. OK, first off, this farm is about 50 miles west of here and apparently in the middle of nowhere so his wife agreed to meet me half way at an intersection on Hwy 151. Actually, I thought that was quite cool since she didn't know me from Adam and for all they knew I could be an on-line cannibal stalker. Or an AmWay representative.
So, at the intersection, we head south on State Hwy 78 which would mean that we are only about 13 miles from the final destination. I'm following her in my car and about 3 miles down the road she takes a left onto County Hwy A. OK, I think to myself, we're taking the short cut. A couple of miles later we take a right onto County Hwy H, which by the way, is a true roller coaster of a highway! A few miles later we turn back onto County Hwy A. WTF???? Then back onto HWY H again and then back onto State HWY 78 again. WTF??? At this point the "shortcut" has added about 9 more miles onto the journey! Then she turns onto Floodplain Road! Just the sound of that got me worried. It's about 12 feet wide, has no shoulders and snakes thru a forest, for Christ's sake. THEN she turns off onto a gravel road that winds up a hill for a couple of miles! This isn't just the middle of nowhere, it's at least 5 or 6 miles the other side of it! Finally, at the top of the hill we get back into a semblance of openness and she pulls off to the side and turns into an open field and keeps driving! OMG, I thought I was about to be taken hostage by the "People Of the Corn" or something! The only thing this picture was missing was a little cross-eyed boy sitting on a stump and playing a banjo!!!! So, she hops out of her van, pulls a wheelbarrow out and motions me over. She plans on dismembering me right there in the field and taking my renderings back to the coven in the wheelbarrow, I just knew it. Then I look to my left and see a tomato patch that had to be the size of 3 basketball courts! With enough tomatoes in it to make a Heinz factory drool.
Come to find out, she is a native New Yorker with a degree so advanced I can't even wrap my brain around it. She's a former software designer for hotel and restaurant POS systems and her husband, who is from Germany, is a financial consultant. And a home brewer, which explained the 3 acres of hops next to the tomatoes. They have two young daughters and were both burnt out on the system so they decided to by a hill top in Wisconsin and become hobby farmers. And moonshiners.
She and I walked the fields, so to speak, and she helped me pick tomatoes until we had filled the wheelbarrow to way over capacity, all the while talking about recipes, cooking, world travel, Mexico, the pit falls of the system, which one of us has the most ridiculous single-use kitchen appliance and how to properly sweeten homemade ketchup with sugar beets. Oh yeah, and about her brother. Who designs gloves in the Garment District of New York! And how he and his partner love to come visit them in Wisconsin because it's so quaint here. Quaint? How gay is this dude???? Didn't see that one coming at all!!!!
Then we start weighing up the tomatoes. She had a scale that a cartel in Colombia would kill for! Made me wonder what else they might be growing up on that hilltop. Bottom line: about 140 lbs of tomatoes for damn near half what they had originally quoted me! Right now the counter tops and dining room are over flowing with designer plum tomatoes, the sink is full of them soaking, all four burners are going full tilt and the kitchen feels like Equador in freaking July! Ahh life is good....
Anyone in the market for some homemade ketchup?
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