SUN-RIPENED TOMATOES

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      After tasting a slice of yesterday’s purchase of a clump of beautiful red tomatoes, and finding it to be half ripe and tasteless, I took a  trip across the internet to discover what has happened to the tomato of the past.

      First, the seed have been modified. Second machines are generally used in harvesting.  These cut the plants; shakes off the tomatoes, both large and small–green, barely pink and rotten. All are rolled onto a conveyor belt and carried down to human hands for sorting. It takes a tough tomato to survive all that. A ripe  one can’t.

    My memories went back to my childhood in the years of the Great Depression when my dad had to switch from being a cotton farmer to a truck farmer. In fact, he had to leave his cotton crop, unpicked, \in the field, because the selling price wouldn't pay for the cost of having it picked.

     Today's generation may find the term "truck farming" a bit puzzling, but it's an old term from the 1800s referring to carrying fresh vegetables to market in carts and wagons. This continued through the 30s,"and 4os. with many Model T cars adapted for hauling a load of produce–a forerunner of pickup trucks.

     The earliest tomatoes to go on the market brought the highest prices, so my dad planted his seed early in a special bed he built.  It had a roll-up canvas cover to protect the young plants from a spring freeze.

      Rains don’t always come at a convenient time, so those plants had to be watered by hand with a syrup bucket with holes punched in the bottom for a sprinkler.  And the water was pumped by hand, one bucket-full at a time. 

      Finally, the plants were ready to be planted in the field. A big field. Dad dug the holes; I dropped the plants, hundreds of them, and Mother covered the roots of each one. Some years this system was disrupted by a drouthy spring. Then, water was hauled to the field on a horse-drawn sled, and water poured in each hole.

      There was a risk attached to trying for an early crop—Texas weather! Hail or a late spring freeze. There was little a farmer could do to protect a field of young plants from hail, but there were many times we covered the plants with paper tents from old magazine pages. Row after row of plants spaced four feet apart, all needing to be protected from freezing temperatures with paper tents.

      After all this troublesome process, the plants begin to bloom and set fruit, and, finally ripen, and be picked by bucketfuls to be carried to a shady spot for sorting and packing.

     Our house had a long south front porch, and that was where we sorted and packed the tomatoes for hauling to market. Ripe tomatoes were set aside to be packed in baskets for local sales—one day of shipping and they would have turned nto a juicy mush. Scared tomatoes were not packed for sale. Those were commonly called "cat-faced." I never saw one that resembled a cat in any way, but I suppose someone did at some time. A little rain shower would cause a split in the skin and those were also set aside.
    Tomatoes were not tumbled helter-skelter into baskets. They were carefully packed in paper lined bushel or half-bushel baskets, starting with the ones with just a blush of pink, and packed in rings, gradually getting riper as the basket was filled. All perfect. Something to dream of, nowadays, as we visit the produce section of our supermarkets, and pick over ethylene-gassed choices.

     That’s the way it was done on our farm ninety years ago.
      If you've never picked tomatoes, you may not know that contact with the vines turns your hands a dirty-looking green. And I'll bet you don't know that the best way to remove it is by tubbing a ripe tomato over your hands like soap. Why not wear gloves?. Welll folks, gloves cost money, and a damaged tomato didn’t.  In those depression  days every penny was saved. So, no gloves.

         Ah, the good ole days with plenty of sun ripened tomatoes.