This picture doesn't quite show just how much 'tomato tar' that we had on our hands this afternoon...but it gives you an idea. Anyone who spends much time around their tomatoes is familiar with tomato tar, a powdery yellow substance that coats hairs all over the tomato plants. It's literally ALL OVER them, so there's really no way to avoid the greenish staining that happens if you like to grow tomatoes. The hairs on the tomatoes are actually producing substances that aid the tomato plant in all kinds of ways, including producing that tomato smell and warding off insects and foliar diseases. After several hours of tomato work, you can build up quite a coating of the stuff on your hands
The word that comes to mind to describe work on our farm during the busy season is...triage! Seriously, deciding what to do and when to do it, when there is always a never ending list of tasks that should be done, does describe the bulk of a farmers job most times. Often, tasks that we'd like to be doing end up falling by the wayside when we decide to prioritize other farm tasks. One of those that has pretty obvious consequences is tomato pruning and trellising. Not a summer has gone by in the life of our farm where we haven't had at least a few instances of needing to 'reclaim' the tomatoes from the jungle that they had become. One of the farm workers absolutely hates to see the tomatoes going wild is Hans. AND Hans is off this week, so we promised him that we'd try to keep those tomatoes at least partially under control while he was away. So today we did a big push at taming the tomato jungle -- you can thank Hans next week when there is a huge pulse of cherry tomatoes!!
See you at your pick up this week - Cheers, Bonnie & Rudy
