The True "Vine-Ripe".....

  Back on the farm, Pop was highly particular about his vegetables.  Only the best, the A-one, the pristine ever made the bins for sale.  His squash were supreme, his peppers...perfect, his eggplants...exquisite.  Nothing, I mean nothing, slipped by his keen eye when it came to selling his produce.  Also, when weighing the produce for sale, he always slipped in a bit of lagniappe.  He always said "Treat your customers as friends and they will always return."  We did...and they did.  But while he sold pound after pound of fresh veggies, he was not one to pick them under-ripe unless some specifically requested him to do so.  "Mr. Hengen, would you sell us some green tomatoes?" was a oft heard request that would send him back out into the fields to do just that.  Otherwise, those tomatoes were picked at the peak of ripeness each day.  What he did not sell each day, was carried inside the old farmhouse where Mom and I canned them.  That is another story for another day but the point is that while he grew acres and acres of vegetables, none were harvested before their time and none went to waste.  Thumping the watermelons, "popping" the kernels of corn, snapping the ends of okra were all tests done with each picking.  Things were truly "vine-ripened" with him.  I always loved going out to the fields at daybreak with him to harvest and load the old Jeep pick-up truck.  Once it was loaded until it could hold no more, we would slowly drive back home to hand wash each individual vegetable until all the field dust was removed.  Then, and only then, were we "open for business".  Good times.

  All of this reminiscing is to bring a point.  Back in the day, things were all grown without harmful additives and without labels.  If a tomato was in the garden, it was a tomato.  It was not "organic" or genetically modified.  It was a tomato, pure and simple.  Growers did not mislead folks either.  If they said it was vine-ripened...it was ripened on the vine. Nowadays, that just isn't so!  The next time you go into the market, check to see how many nice, red tomatoes you can find.  Tons....and most are touted as "vine-ripe".  Visions of a lush, juicy tomato fills the mind and makes the mouth water.  Too bad.   I have got news for you. THEY AREN'T!  In today's produce market, a "vine-ripe" tomato means that it was picked when only ten percent of the surface has changed to a slight rosy pink.  And, get this, only a few of the tomatoes are checked for even that ripeness.  Once some have reached the "desired stage", the field is harvested in one clean sweep making the tomatoes being picked at all different stages of unripeness.  Well, that is sort of misleading now isn't it?  The fruit was snatched from the plant far before Old Mr. Sun could do his job and instill a good bit of flavor into that tomato.  The bland, cardboard-tasting, dried-out tomato wannabe, just is not what is touted with all of the fancy-schmancy words.  An  unripe tomato is an unripe tomato.  Sorry.  Now, if you want green tomatoes, don't get the idea that you can buy those red things in the store.  Unripe tomatoes are not even green tomatoes.  They are just blah. Oh, and, by the way, those tomatoes are "gassed" to make them have that red hue.

  Personally, I let the tomatoes absorb as much of the beautiful sunshine and life-giving rain as they want.  I refuse to pick them until the redness literally oozes from the fruit.  They taste so much better!  They taste like a tomato should.  They are truly vine-ripened.  The tomatoes in the picture?  They stayed one more full day to ripen to a deep red before we picked them and, oh, my goodness, were they tasty!  I am so glad that the garden is filled with such delights and I am so glad Pop taught me how to grow things.