Garden Tomatoes - MMMMmm

                Harvest season is almost over in these parts of the country. We’ve become so used to green house and transportation technology presenting us with fresh vegetables all year that we tend to forget the foods of the season have a time limit . . . except for garden tomatoes. Yes, we can get tomatoes all year long, beautiful perfectly formed red globes. Still the exclamation from August through September rings loudly as we sink our teeth into sloppy, artistically formed, scarred and deeply colored clowns of the harvest  – “mmm there’s nothing like the taste of tomatoes from the garden” we exclaim.

                The thing about garden fresh tomatoes is the metaphor for the garden itself: from early summer to the intense heat of late July, early August, tomato plants grow tall and wide singing sweetly, showing their delicate yellow blossoms soon to turn into little green shiny balls.

As the new green fruits grow larger and fatter, we hopeful gardeners begin dreaming in anticipation of all the harvest. Green beans come on quickly and soon scream at us to get out there and harvest! We eat the sweet first fresh strands and store the rest. Beans are gone as swiftly as they come,  while those puffy tomato plants continue to grow bigger with still green globes. Sniffing the air with their pungent fragrance, we linger on anticipations of summer meals decorated with a plate of tasty, very tasty, sliced tomatoes. Not yet. Wait. Wait. We are taunted by their beauty and the memory of that luscious taste.

Then sometime in mid-August the green becomes painted with pink, light orange, soft red, and suddenly, BAM! Tomatoes! Eat eat until you never thought it would happen but you get sick of them. C’mon eat! Soon they will be gone. And so they are.

                Yes, they are canned and frozen and combined with other great flavors into sauces and salsas. Yes, we can buy some pretties at the grocery store all winter long. But too soon, the mouth-watering fruit that tantalizes all our senses even to the kinetic dribbles down our face and arms are done. With much sighing, we rescue a few of the lingering green ones and stretch them out on an available window sill in October for one more chance to absorb that succulent flavor. Ahh. 

Hope you enjoy other garden stories in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle (also good to read on iPod and computer), cheap - $2.99. 

It's All About BUSINESS

Though Crunchy Granola, the book, reads like a back-to-the land memoir, it is really a book about Business, capital B. What we learned about living with animals, growing our own food, building a house, and raising (or being raised by) delightful children were all just day-to-day do-with-what-is. The bigger story is how we learned the basic principles of Commerce and the tremendous impact on our understanding the world around us.

            The book, A Homestead Decade  - How CrunchyGranola Changed My Life, begins with a gigantic bale of broom straw brought to our snowy homestead by an 18-wheeler and dropped off at the top of the hill presenting us with a serious problem-solving issue: how to get the bale down the hill, then how to store it in our tiny workshop.

            Yes, brooms. We became broom makers out of a dire need to feed and clothe our children and it was the next thing in front of us. With unbridled enthusiasm (ignorance notwithstanding) we threw ourselves into the business opportunity. The principles are simple on paper: production, marketing, and distribution. We didn’t need a textbook or degree to figure out the tremendous list under each of those items.

Production – means design, equipment, raw materials, storage, hands and bodies, and lots of coffee. We learned to produce beautiful fireplace brooms and variations on each. We learned to find and manage the raw materials from the best sources across the Midwest. We learned, sometimes grudgingly, to discipline ourselves to the task.

Marketing – required creative thinking about who the market might be and how to reach the various entities (before computers and the elegant electronic tools available to us today). We learned about seasonal timing. We enjoyed the ego boost of sales from all over the country including our grand sister states Alaska and Hawaii. We also learned that The Market, even our little hand crafted product, can be surprisingly vulnerable to the ebb and flow of consumer trends.

And the real surprise Distribution – how to get the hard earned product to the customer (and collect payment) especially when the nearest UPS distribution station was more than 40 miles away and there’s an OPEC oil embargo interfering with us little tiny business people just trying to survive, and your mother is calling wondering what you are doing playing with goats and brooms and when are you going to get a real job.

            The size of the business really didn’t matter in this grand MBA lesson. Trucks and trains and ocean container freight all have new meaning to us. We discern from “good ads” and crappy advertising unlike ever before. We have come to understand BUSINESS. Bet you never thought Crunchy Granola could do that for you.

As always, thanks for stopping by. If you get an e-copy of the book from AmazonKindle (cheap $2.99) let us know what you think.

Loving the fall colors,

Helene