Tomatoes from a Cool Summer

This has been a particularly cool summer for us in the Bay Area. Home vegetable gardeners are lamenting the lack of warmth and the lack of growth of their tomatoes. These farmers, 'dry farming' their tomatoes, seem to have succeeded; for more on dry farming, see http://agwaterstewards.org/txp/Resource-Center-Articles/22/dry-farming.

I am lucky enough to live in the middle of a the cornucopia that is central coastal California, where crops thrive year-round and fresh produce is available from streetcorner vendors as well as more established merchants. Farmers markets aren't always inexpensive, but I enjoy the idea of seeing unusual varieties which can't sustain the shelf life needed for Safeway or other industrial grocers' shelves. And not to sound too much like Alice Waters, eating what's ripe instead of eating summer fruit (from the Southern Hemisphere) in the middle of winter is both a way to get variety and be able to pay more for the produce and less for its transport.

Heavy thoughts for just my second blip!