Grandpa's Delivery Route and Random Garden Pics

One of my favorite bloggers (Garden Now - Think Later . . . see link on right hand sidebar) wrote today about harvesting some of her heirloom tomatoes.

This brought back memories of my grandpa's garden back in Illinois when I was growing up. I don't remember his garden as being overly large, but he sure did get a lot of produce out of it.

About once a week during the growing season, he had a route he followed to each of his seven grown kids' houses to deliver whatever produce his garden offered up that week. (All of his children were married with families of their own, and living in the same town they grew up in. That doesn't happen much anymore, does it?)

Thinking back, I guess you could say each of the families had their own private CSA subscription, but didn't have to pay for it!

What I recall about that summer garden produce most was the huge, misshapen, wonderfully delicious heirloom tomatoes Grandpa gave us. These fruits were not grown for uniform size or sustainability in shipping but rather for good, old-fashioned flavor. They were meant to be ripened to perfection on the vine, picked, handled with care and eaten within a day or two.

I can remember a big plate of thickly sliced tomatoes at dinners and lunches of baloney, tomato, and mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread for days after one of Grandpa's deliveries.

Also, he often brought green onions (scallions). Mom would put a dozen or so of these on the table, and we would eat them with salt . . . and gusto! I always grow scallions in my garden and at least once a season for nostalgic reasons, I put a bunch of them on the table the way Mom used to. We each eat maybe one green onion . . . and decide they're a little too zingy to indulge in more. Were the scallions milder in flavor back in my childhood? I think they must have been.

So, thanks, Erin, for your post today featuring heirloom tomatoes. It brought back lots of good memories. And my grandpa would say to you, "You've done good, Girlie!"