First Tomatoes

I've been gathering a couple of small tomatoes from the humble garden I planted this spring, which consists mainly of eleven tomato plants, with five or six different varieties. (Have I mentioned that I love tomatoes?)

It's exciting to harvest them and they're pretty tasty, but part of me can't help wondering if it's actually worth it. I trade with the farmers at the markets where I vend and I come home with all kinds of great produce, including tomatoes. It's so much easier and cheaper than going out there every day weeding and watering. I have to admit, some of the ones I bring home from the markets really do taste better than mine.

On some level I'm not being fair to myself. I'm an amateur gardener with a lousy track record, and I'm comparing my tomatoes to specimens grown by people whose life's work is growing tomatoes. Besides, the real issue isn't the time and expense I have to put into growing my own tomatoes, but rather the fact that our social and economic system treats the labor of growing and producing food as one of the least important and least valued enterprises (along with caring for children) when it's actually the most important kind of work. If we weren't able to eat, none of the other stuff could happen.

The practice of paying farmworkers a barely subsistence wage has put us in a situation where it's hard to find domestic labor to do the job. The cheap food made from the produce harvested with cheap labor is making many people sick and obese, and creating a bind where farmers who have available land and the skills and knowledge to produce better food aren't producing up to capacity because it's not cost effective for them to sell their fruits and vegetables at the kinds of prices that folks are used to paying.

So when I ask myself whether it's actually worth it for me to dig and weed and water when I have so much else to do, I have to conclude that it's worth it if only to have a first hand experience of what it takes to produce this food that I so often take for granted.