In The Eyes Of The Beholder

[dcarch]

With the crazy weather we have had, it may account for the many deformed fruits this year.

I am sure Picasso would think they are beautiful

dcarch

[Dufresne]

beautiful!!!!!!

[hasshoes]

Cool pic.

Funny thing. . . when I see catfacing I drool . . . "regular" looking toms make me suspicious. ;-)

[Wi-sunflower]

"regular" looking toms make me suspicious.

I know what you mean. When vendors come in with a huge amount of big perfect all the same sized tomatoes I wonder where they bought them. Especially with the weather we've had the last few years. Totally not conducive to perfect tomatoes.

We've had so much low temps this year that I'm getting a lot of catfacing on most of my big tomatoes too. I'm also getting a lot of those smaller inclusion or damage spots I see on some in the pic above. I know I've had some critters nibbling on tomatoes to get moisture.

Lots of cracking too, due to the irregular rains.

About the only thing is that people give "heirlooms" more latitude for being less than perfect since they know that they will most likely have such better flavor than those perfect tomatoes.

Carol

[Granite26]

Yep it has been one of those years where deformities are everywhere in the toms. I have been unable to sell many because of this. It is a shame because it is hardest on the large size toms with great flavor.

I get frustrated looking at many vendors at the farmers market here. Perfect blemish free toms..not quite ripe, pile of green beans that dont have that fresh picked smell etc.....then the next table the exact same produce...the next table the exact same produce...you get the picture. Ahh and the suspicious distributor boxes in the back of the van too.

Anyway the deformed toms have tasted real good with just a little more work cutting out the flaws!

(sorry about the market ranting but it helped...thanks!)

[hasshoes]

Yeah. . . that must really suck for you guys if you're trying to do what farmers markets and stands are supposed to do. . . and other people are seeing it as a chance to just set up a cheap mini grocery store isle.

I once saw "Farm Fresh" peaches at a big lovely farm stand in early June- in New England.

[walkinggin]

Thanks for the laugh and they look fabulous, I hope they tasted great.

I saw a magnificently catfaced, so called Cherokee Purple today at farmer's market (so called because the vendor insisted they were all Cherokee Purple but the table looked to me to be a mix of blacks including many plum shaped).

If it had not weighted over 2 Lbs! I would have bought it but I couldn't justify a six dollar tomato. When I laughingly pointed it out to my DH the vendor seemed miffed.

How to explain that we weren't laughing at the tomato, we were laughing with the tomato?

[newatthiskat]

Now that is a picture for the wall!

Kat

[Wi-sunflower]

Almost all the farmers markets I've ever sold at have a rule that the produce HAS to be "homegrown" and that means grown by the person/stand selling it. You aren't even supposed to be buying from neighbor farmers to sell something. The problem is that most of the governing bodies don't know how to do a proper inspection of a farm if there is a complaint against a farmer, IF they even bother to enforce the rule in the first place.

I sold at the West Allis farmers market for 20 years. It is the longest continually opperating market in Wisconsin at over 100 years old. I finally quit there when it got to the point that on any given Saturday, at least 1/2 the produce came from the downtown "commission market" or a huge 5,000 acre wholesale grower in Kenosha county.

My main market now, the Dane County farmers market, aka the market on the capitol square in Madison, is the only one that does a decent job of enforcing it's rules. That's because it's governed by a board of directors made up of it's members themselves. Farmers run it, not a local health dept or downtown assoc. Even there, there is a little bit of cheating that doesn't get caught, but not much.

What hurts about markets that allow cheating is the fact that the customers never get to know what the REAL local grown produce tastes like. At West Allis, there would be a farmer that most every year brought in a pick-up load of tomatoes/ cantaloup about a week or so before anyone else had ripe tomatoes/ cantaloup. People would buy them, get that awful shipped-in taste and say "oh this isn't a good year, they don't taste very good". They didn't realize that it was only THAT farmer's stuff that didn't taste very good. Often it would ruin the market for the rest of us.

At least at the Madison market there are enough customers to go around. There are people that will buy the heavily sprayed stuff some big growers bring in, and others that want totally certified organic. My own stuff is somewhere in between. We aren't organic, but we use very little beyond fertilizer unless a crop is in danger. And then it's mostly a spray for bug control. We very rarely spray for disease as by the time you see something it's usually to late to do anything anyway, IF there even is something labeled for vegies any more.

OK off my soapbox now. It's just that unless you grow something, most people really have no idea what the GOOD produce REALLY should look like.

Carol