Pay no attention To This Picture

Here we are, a cute little cart of tomatoes all stacked in buckets ready to be driven to the house.

It does look nice, but it's not what it seems. And it makes me laugh to see this picture I took just a few hours ago.

There was much stooping and sweating and swatting of squash bugs that fly at you from the plants. They still startle me as I rustle each tomato plant, although I already know they are there!
I don't know exactly how much these buckets weigh when they're full of tomatoes, but it's almost more than I can pick up and swing two more feet in front of me in the row, clunking it down, standing up and stretching, bending over another plant.

I kept gazing over the garden looking for Will, hoping he was finished picking cucumbers ...they're just as heavy, and prickly besides. He came to the rescue and we filled all the buckets we brought out to the field (there were more than those in the cart), so we just kind of said...'oh well, we'll finish tomorrow'.
...I'm deleriously happy to have the tomatoes. This weekend looks like a sauce-making weekend to be sure, and I've been jealously watching tomatoes go out the door to the Health Food store, or to regular customers. I kept saying..."ok, the next ones are for US, ok?" It's time again for our Perkins Family Private Label 'No Sauce For You!' Tomato Sauce.
That's the stuff that stays on the shelf. Since we're not going to the Farmer's Market this year, there's no need to make it to sell...which is fine. It's impossible to charge a decent price that reflects the work involved, and we wouldn't want to charge an arm and a leg.

We hung out our little signs and people have been drifting by and that's been nice. It seems like everyone knows we're here and we can be more relaxed about selling...even if we don't have the market tent up, we can just stroll over to the house when we see a car drive in, and pull out the scale and some bags and the veggies out of the outside fridge, and have a nice conversation with someone we haven't seen since last season.

This is last year's tent, and it looks like when the corn and the watermelons come in, the tent is going back up...