View from the Mountain

Being thankful for our tomatoes

It is a little unusual these days to hear about crop failures in the United States, but that is just what I read about in the NYT article, Northeast Tomatoes Lost, and Potatoes May Follow.

Apparently a late blight fungus is wiping out most of the region's tomatoes.  I talked to a friend in New Brunswick, Canada this week.  While his tomatoes are not a failure yet, he is worried the September frosts might rob him of most of his crop. Their spring has also been cool and damp.

Closer to home, my relatives in Yadkin County, NC near Winston-Salem are reporting a less than stellar year with their tomatoes.  Many of their tomatoes are very small, and some are showing blossom end rot. 

While wandering around the Roanoke Market last week, there seemed to be plenty of tomatoes, but it is hard to tell their origin.  At Jamison's Produce in Roanoke County, the prettiest tomatoes were from someplace in North Carolina.

With all this tomato trouble about in the land, it is something of an embarrassment to have more than we can eat from our four plants.  Today we made fresh salsa and stewed tomatoes with corn.  Every time we have a sandwich, even when it is not a tomato one, there is a tomato on it.

Still as you can see from the photo, we still have an impressive number of tomatoes even after an all out effort to catch up to the crop.

I know we have some Roanoke friends who would enjoy some of our tomatoes.  Maybe the timing of our next trip to the mountains will work out a little better with our tomato production.

For now we are just going to enjoy having homegrown tomatoes and wish everyone better luck next year.

The sweet taste of victory from the first tomato

Our annual tomato contest ended on June 5 this year when I decided to pick my first two tomatoes. Over the next few days, the two challengers to my throne eventually admitted defeat.

Victory came a little later than last year's June 1 tomato, but after all the years of barely getting tomatoes in Canada in August, June 5 looks pretty good.

I first wrote about our tomato gardening in the spring of 2005 in a post called, The Spring Tomato Ritual.

Growing tomatoes is often thought of as something done mostly by aging southern women.  I suspect that idea is kept alive by the media.

There are southern women who do grow tomatoes, but in my opinion most of the tomatoes are grown by the men of the South.  That is the way it has been for as long as I can remember.  The ladies might grow a few plants, but the men would often put in rows of tomatoes.  My mother was a great gardener.  Tomatoes were one of her favorite crops, and she would always plant four or five plants each year.  My wife's father, however, planted row upon row of tomato plants.  He often had them growing up the side of his house.

My mother continued growing wonderful tomatoes into her nineties, but I picked up most of my tomato skills trying to convince tomatoes to grow in the cool Nova Scotia and New Brunswick climates.

While I am now limited by space to four or five plants, they produce so many tomatoes that we are often searching for people who want tomatoes by early July. Our tomatoes do make a significant impact on our summer food budget.  The return on investment on a few tomato plants is huge.

During the summer, a tomato sandwich is often lunch at our house.  Sometimes it becomes a BLT, and often it ends up in salad.  It is amazing how little work it takes to grow such a large number of tomatoes.

Now that our contest to see who got the first tomato is over.  I can relax and enjoy the tomatoes, and plan my next year's victory.  The next thing is to see if we can beat last year's giant tomato which weighed 1.33 pounds.

Tomatoes once again

While I plan to keep View from the Mountain focused on information that might be of use to people in our technology enhanced society, I do not plan to abandon some of my traditional topics.

One of those is our annual "Great Tomato Race."  This started years ago when a childhood friend of mine who still lives in Lewisville, NC and I started competing to see who could get the first tomato.

Since I lived in the mountains of Virginia, Mike, my friend, did not have much trouble beating me in the early years.  I think I managed one win in about five years.  In late 2006 we moved to the coast, but it took me a year to figure out the climate and varieties.  Last year I won with a June 1 tomato.

Now rumors of me moving to the coast just to win the tomato contest are totally unfounded.  I moved for the beaches, fish, water, and laid back life style.  However, I did enjoy winning last year.

We also picked up another contestant last year in my fishing buddy Dean who also lives at the coast. This year there has been a fair amount of jockeying and suggestions that I might have an unfair advantage living close to the water.

In fact I could hear the moans yesterday when I sent out the picture of our first tomato blooms.  We are on track to have another great year unless the fiddler crabs attack early.

Tomato wars are something you are born to fight if you have southern blood running through your veins.  My mother was a master tomato grower as was my wife's dad. 

Victory or not I will be enjoying great tomato sandwiches early in June.  Watch this page for announcements.

The pretenders to my crown will be crushed.

A June 1 ripe tomato, the taste of victory is sweet

It has been a long time coming, but this tomato victory is one that I am going to enjoy.

My friend Mike might show up with a ripe tomato later today, but those who snooze lose as they say in the tomato race business.

Since I started the contest, I'm declaring myself victor.

This battle of the tomato growers started years ago, but the race was on this year with my April 3rd post announcing that my plants were in the ground.

I credit my victory to my superior cool weather tomato growing skills that were honed by years of coaxing tomatoes out of the rocky, cold soils of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

If the emails are to be believed, Mike even applied electric heat lamps in an attempt to derail my victory.

Unfortunately, Dean, my local competition, was reduced to planning for next year after he was caught unaware by a late frost.  My waterside tomato patch survived that with no problems.

There is nothing like living on salt water to keep the frost away and bring the tomato trophy home finally.

Now we'll have to see whether Mike is gonna pull a Hillary on me.  I may or may not reveal the variety that I used to win.

Our Oak is a teenager, and we're a lot older

It was nineteen years ago this past festival in the park weekend when we visited Roanoke to make the decision to move.

It didn't take us long to decide Roanoke would be a great place for our family to live.

Our kids were young, and we were excited to be in Roanoke after a couple of years in the intense environment of Columbia, MD.

Roanoke seemed like a green mountain paradise filled with friendly people.

Our home on the mountain overlooking Roanoke city is where we our kids really grew up.  It was their fourth house, but it is the spot they call home.

While all three were born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, they all spent only a few of their early years on the farm.  Then it was on to Halifax and Columbia.

I can still remember bringing the kids to get a look at the house for the first time.  I had watched it being built before we even bought it.  I loved the spot and was nervous that they might not.

Actually it took a lot of selling for me to convince my wife that it was a good spot.  She was worried about their being enough kids around.  That did end up being a little bit of challenge, but there are some great memories up here on the hill.

The kids were a piece of cake, the house has huge bedrooms, and they made the most of them.

It was actually in the fall of 1989 when we finally moved into the house.  Our Oak tree was barely visible in the front yard.

There were also no houses around us.  Now we are surrounded by homes, and we are some of the last of the first settlers still left on the hill.

Our kids are grown up and all through with college now.  The only teenager is the big Oak in our front yard.  For years it didn't look like it was going to make it.  Then all of sudden the Oak found whatever it needed and really started growing.

One of the tree guys who has looked at it said that it will eventually be as wide as it is tall right now.  Unfortunately that means it might be too big for the yard some day.

We had a Silver Maple which girded itself and died before we figured out what was wrong.  The Oak seemed to grow even faster once the Maple was gone.  There are a number of large Poplars in the back behind the house.  We also have a huge Ash tree and several Black Walnut trees.

Still of all our trees, the Oak that grew strong and true is my favorite.  It reminds me of our kids.  They are past their teenage years and just now finding what they need to grow.

I hope the Oak will be around for a lot of years to remind them of the home that they once had on the mountain overlooking Roanoke.

Maybe sailing ships will come back, and it will find a home as part of ship that will travel the world.