Home Delivery

After spending the winter attacking 4 acres of mostly weeds that were 8 to 12 feet tall, we decided this spring to NOT plant anything that needs much care including a garden. For one thing, we were concerned about how we were going to take care of to us what seemed like a park sized yard. How much trouble would we have trying to get the yard and property spruced up would help us decide how big a garden to plant in the future.

Enter my mother...

While Mom was here in June, she decided that we needed a pepper and a couple tomato plants. Never mind that she wouldn't be here to enjoy them at harvest, she just had the perfect place in mind and that's where they went. All summer, Margie nurtured those plants but the pepper didn't do much except occupy space. The tomato plants on the other hand went nuts! The two plants now look down on my 5'2" wife, and there are blooms on them everywhere. Only problem is we've had blooms like this all summer it seems and only yesterday did Marge pick her first tomato from our farm(stead). There are some other tomatoes getting close to being ripe, but there are less than a dozen on both plants so far.

Shortly after our initial "harvest", one of our neighbors showed up with a yellow 5 gallon bucket in his hand. Now I figured he was bringing some more sweet corn as he had stopped just a day or so earlier with the same yellow container full of what I have to say was some of the most delicious corn on the cob I've had...ever. Anyway, it turned out it wasn't corn, but tomatoes. 5 GALLONS of tomatoes. We got one tomato and he's got 5 GALLONS he's giving away.

Needless to say, it stole a bit of Margie's tomato thunder, but she got right to work and we've got a pretty good supply of tomato soup available for use this winter already. The unexpected benefit of country living is reaping the benefits of our neighbors gardens, and it turns out they provide home delivery as well!

I think I've mentioned we've got great neighbors before, but if you don't know, we've got GREAT neighbors! Folks are so generous around here providing us home grown goodies including rhubarb, cut green beans, pitted cherries (ready for a pie!), sweet corn, and now tomatoes.

Next year we're going to have a garden. Now I don't know what we'll plant that the neighbors don't already have, but we hope to repay a bit of their kindness with some home delivered produce of our own.