Hey there!
So I figured it was about time to talk tomatoes with you. I absolutely LOVE Sherelle Christensen's blog. I love her photos of her kids and her farm and all the farm-iness that comes with it! Not long ago, she shared what I thought was a fabulous idea. She has a rather large garden and she got an old kitchen scale and decided that she'd weigh all of the produce that they harvest out of her garden this year, just to see how many pounds of veggies they're able to grow and eat in a season. I love that!
Well, around here, we don't have a large veggie garden. However, we do have 4 tomato plants --- one Beefmaster, one Better Boy, one Celebrity and one Rainbow Heirloom. I can't even begin to tell you the amount of joy they have brought me so far this summer. We planted them when they were little tiny plants and it's been such a thrill to watch them grow by leaps and bounds (some are taller than ME now!) and they now have lots and LOTS of green tomatoes on them, that we'll be enjoying even more once they're ready to be eaten in a few more weeks!
As a side note, I should probably tell you that if I were left to my own devices, I would love to buy an old farm house -- you know, the kind with a huge wrap-around porch -- and would renovate it, keeping as much of the "old" as I could, while adding all of the new modern conveniences that one needs to survive on a farm. :) Perhaps something like the old farm house that Sarah Richardson bought and renovated on her show, Sarah's House.
I would likely also have a chicken coop. Never mind that it would be messy and there would be chicken poop to deal with and a coop to clean out. I'm not sure how I'd get around that part, but I love the idea of going out and gathering our own eggs every day. Don't even mind the fact that we really don't eat that many eggs, it just being the two of us here at the McVey Ranch. That's beside the point.
And if I had the modern old farm house and the chicken coop, I would also have a huge garden. One that weeded itself, perhaps? However, it's just us and our flowers and 4 tomato plants. So I told Bartley about Sherelle's fabulous idea about weighing the produce from her garden and we decided that even though we don't have a cool vintage kitchen scale like Sherelle does, we can at least track how many tomatoes we pull off of each of the 4 varieties of plants, so that next year we'll know if we want to put in those same varieties or perhaps swap out for others.
Fast forward to two days ago when my mother-in-law arrived. We were all talking about the tomatoes and our plan to track the numbers and she said that we should weigh them! Haha......to which we replied, "But we don't have a kitchen scale"......to which she replied, "Well I'm sure you can get them at lots of places".....and so the hunt began! We hopped on our computers and voila! We found the cute little Paula Deen kitchen scale in the photo above at Wal-mart of all places, for just $14! I love that even though it's a new scale, it's at least a bit vintage in style. And so, we brought home the kitchen scale and put our first fat Beefmaster tomato in and weighed it.....all 3/4 of a pound!
I'm so, SO excited to continue tracking not only the amount of tomatoes we harvest from our plants, but also how much they weigh. After all, most of the time when you buy tomatoes in the store, they're sold based on their weight. This will be a fun little venture for us and at the end of the summer, we'll be able to see how much money we would have had to spend if we'd bought all of those tomatoes in the store instead of the 4 little plants we purchased to the tune of maybe $6! :)
I should also mention that we ate that fat Beefmaster baby with lunch today and it was SCRUMPTIOUS. There is nothing like a home-grown tomato. HOME-grown. Love it.
And as you can see by these photos, there are lots more where that baby came from!
You know how some people show lots of pictures of their sweet little children on their blogs? I show you my delicious tomatoes. Hahaha! What can I say? These are important topics we cover here at the blog-o!
Hope you're having a fabulous day. I'm singing at church this morning -- both services, and then my mother-in-law and I are off to my niece's bridal shower. By the time I get home, it will likely be about supper time and I will hopefully be able to put my feet up for a bit and relax.
Take care, Peeps....
