How very Berkeley, you might say, but they currently have over 6000 subscribers. We're not among them (we only buy food from Chevron gas stations) but Lauren, Evan and Logan are, and so they were invited to the farm's annual tomato festival this weekend! Thankfully they invited us too, possibly for our wonderful company but more probably for our large tent.
Temperatures soared as we headed up past Sacramento, and were nudging triple Fahrenheit digits as we pulled into the farm and were shown to our pitch among the peach trees. Unfortunately no one had thought to flatten the ground from the deep tractor tracks, but a little cunning engineering - driving their 4x4 backwards and forwards a few times - helped things out.
Camp set, we wandered down to the festivities. There were tomato tasting booths all around, each variety desperately canvassing for your vote to be named top tomato of the year. Full-sized and cherry tomatoes were judged separately, for obvious reasons, but the variety of shapes and colours on display was quite incredible. Usually my only interaction with a tomato is the ketchup on my burger, but I have a new found respect.
Though tomatoes dominated, there was also strawberry and fennel picking, organic food and drink aplenty, tractor rides (tip: do not sit directly behind the tractor unless you like the taste of dust), and live bands late into the night. They had both types of music: country and western.
I'm not sure if it was the surfeit of tomatoes, the uneven ground, or the bright moonlight that caused me to not sleep too well, but at least it was cooler when we awoke this morning. Hannah made her traditional blueberry pancake camping breakfast (she had threatened to switch blueberries for tomatoes) and we came home and jumped into the pool. Well, I didn't want to get our shower dirty with all that dust!
Yep, a nicely furrowed camping spot.
Luckily Logan had packed some diggers, so he and Evan got straight to work.
And then we marked our territory (the tomato, white and blue).
Down at the festival, where they managed to get people to pay to pick their own fruit! That's marketing genius.
Hannah gets her jaws around some of the juicy contenders.
Tomatoes!
More tomatoes!
A tomato with the head of a man! I thought they weren't genetically modified.
Ready to ride (and get incredibly dusty).
With an MBA, you too could be a farm worker.
Picking and eating.
Picking...
...and eating.
A field of fennel. We also found a few cloves of organic garlic in there. And a snake!
After all that hard work, it was time to party.
Hickory hoedown.
Into the night with the great Old Man Markley (punk bluegrass).
