Home Grown Tomatoes

Jaune Flamme Tomatoes

That's the title of one of my favorite Guy Clark songs, and also one of my next projects. I love the whole home gardening process, from getting the soil ready to eating and sharing the fruits of my labor.

This year I'll be growing quite a few heirloom vegetables. Cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, bell peppers, and seven kinds of tomatoes. I have to say that although my expectations for superior taste are pretty high, I don't think I'll be disappointed. The words "garden variety" have often been used together as a pejorative, identifying something as common, unremarkable. Truth be told the roots of the phrase are actually referring to heirloom plants. They haven't been hybridized and over-bred to withstand the rigors of shipping, so they are much more tender and almost always tastier than the fruits and vegetables you can buy in a store.
I've grown heirloom vegetables before, along with various hybrid varieties. The heirlooms always tasted better.

I'll be growing organically, of course. My post-appropriate named friend, Mark Beets, has a new blog and a shared opinion of the holier-than-thou attitude of many of our celebrities when it comes to saving the earth, but there are many opportunities for the financially challenged among us to do good things for the environment, and ourselves, on a budget. Planting an organic garden is a great step, and a lot cheaper than buying produce at Whole Foods.

My first "organic" garden was when I was sixteen. I use the quotation marks because I was living in Port Neches, TX at the time. Port Neches is in the Golden Triangle area of the state, so named because of the large petrochemical complex that was in my little corner of the world. I steadfastly refused to use chemical fertilizers and insecticides, not realizing at the time how polluted the air, water, and soil was all around me.

The Gardener

There was room in the house I rented for a decent sized organic garden. After I'd return home from trout fishing (see previous post) I'd prepare the fish for baking. I was just beginning to enjoy cooking, and my repertoire was small. When prepping the trout I'd butter the inside, then season it with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. I'd then scatter almond slivers inside the cavity, wrap it in foil and bake for a half hour at 350 degrees.

After getting the trout into the oven I'd put a pot of water on the stove. Once it began to boil, I'd go out to the garden and grab an ear of corn, shucking it on the way, until there was a trail of husks leading to the back door. I'd drop the ear of corn into the boiling water and wait somewhat impatiently until dinner was ready.

I've mentioned that I go a little nuts when I find something I like to do. I was subscribing to a few gardening magazines at the time, and one of the articles I read mentioned that corn kernels were full of natural sugar when on the stalk. Once picked the sugar began converting into starch, which meant the fresher the corn, the sweeter the taste. The author of that article was not wrong. That was the sweetest corn I've ever had.

If I started everything correctly, the trout and corn were ready at the same time. Light, flaky trout accompanied by garden fresh corn on the cob is simple, tasty, and one of the best meals I've ever had.

Karma

I used to work with a fitness freak. Ron took all the necessary precautions to have a healthy life. During a company-wide meeting, the flu shot line was next to the free donut line. Ron looked at me and laughed. "You better get a flu shot," he said. "You're going to regret not doing it if you get sick." I refused, on the grounds that flu vaccines were manufactured using a weak strain of the virus. I understood the science. Truth be told I rarely get sick. I'll get the flu about once every twelve years or so, and wasn't due for a while. Besides, I really wanted a donut.

Two weeks later Ron got the flu. When he finally made it back into work, he looked pale and sounded rough. Not one to pass up an opportunity to be an ass to my friends, I teased Ron a little bit.

"You must be really frustrated."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you go to the gym, you eat healthy, you don't smoke and got a flu shot, but still got sick. On the other hand, I don't go to the gym, I smoke, I eat junk food and didn't get a flu shot, and I feel great!"

Fast forward to last night. Despite the occasional donut or order of fries, I eat pretty healthy. If there is an option, I'll shell out the extra bucks and go organic every time. Last night I prepared a dinner of organic baked potato and organic, free range chicken thighs, baked on a rack with the skin removed so that the fat could drain. I started feeling queasy soon after the meal, and went to bed earlier than usual. A few moments later I was in the bathroom, my body rejecting (and ejecting) the free range organic chicken with extreme prejudice.

I was up every hour on the hour until about eight this morning, and spent most of the day in and out of consciousness. Whatever it was, a bad 24 hour virus or a touch of salmonella, I am back to feeling like myself, and remembering how I teased poor Ron and why I believe in karma.

Here Comes The Sun

We’re planning to move closer to Austin, Texas, sometime in the next year. We have a beautiful little piece of ground that backs up to a year round creek, and want to build as green as possible. Hydropower is unfortunately not an option, but we can and will make as much use as we can afford of the available solar and wind technologies.It’s going to be expensive in the short term but as far as I can tell, with rising energy costs we’ll be able to recoup our investments a lot faster than the projected 20 to 30 years.

Research isn’t as easy as I hoped it would be, for there is an almost paralyzing number of websites out there for people interested in building green, and with the nature of Internet search engines it’s sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.I’ve spent most of my life trying to be as green as possible, and still have a life. When I was sixteen I planted an organic vegetable garden, mulched with hay to keep the water bill down. Of course, I was in Port Neches, Texas at the time, and the air, dirt, and groundwater was poisoned by decades of runoff and discharge from the nearby petrochemical plants. Looking back, I probably ingested more poison that harvest season than if I had just bought everything at the local grocery store.

Now we know better, at least most of us do. More and more average people are paying attention to where their food comes from, and how it was treated. I’ve been boring the hell out of my family and friends for the past five years or so that organic food was going to save the American family farm. Even supermarkets have organic alternatives now, and they are increasing the number of green items for sale on an almost weekly basis. My wife and I have been buying organic as much as we could for several years, and the first thing we noticed was that organic tastes better. A lot better. Most times it’s also much more nutritious.

Organic farmer’s markets are popping up all over the place, and the demand for green living is no longer limited to the pantry. Architects specialize in green design. Bamboo has become the wood (even though it’s a grass) of choice for flooring. More of us recycle. Electric cars are back in vogue, and this time it looks like they’ll be here to stay.

Our new home will have a rainwater catchment system, a gray water recovery system, passive solar hot water, solar panels, wind turbines, and will be constructed of as much natural material as possible. We’ll also have a greenhouse and a small orchard. In short, we plan to be as self-sufficient as we can without living like Trappist monks. We’ll still have the big TV, air conditioning (My wife is from Minnesota. She does not do sweaty.), and all the other modern amenities that make life grand. We just want to do it without adding to the problem.