29/52: Heirloom Tomatoes and Squash Dolls

Well, at the time these pictures were taken, we were still in the "one or two ripe tomatoes each day" stage, and this was the first of the Carbon tomatoes + my first tomato-mozzarella sandwich of the summer, always a favorite milestone! Since then, though, we are up to approximately 3/4 bushel of tomatoes each day, and I've got my first gallon bag of sauce tomatoes in the freezer already, to be dealt with when I have the energy. We have maybe 80 plants out in the garden, and I'm trying to give the CSA at least 2 lbs of tomatoes each week (which will probably rise as they keep ripening!), but even with that + selling extras, we're still eating them for basically every meal, and it's wonderful! We've had a lot of blossom-end rot this year, which I know is caused by calcium deficiency but I did not know until this year that the actual calcium deficiency is generally because of dry weather/uneven watering, which doesn't allow the plants to take up the calcium in the soil efficiently. Add tomato hornworms to that, and you'll understand why we plant so many - have to account for the inevitable losses!

The kids have been helping me harvest every other morning, and last week I still wasn't up to doing it on my own so I sent them out to find whatever they could. They came in with some new friends! Alice the Striped Zucchini, Grace the Bell Pepper, Emily the Eight-Ball Zucchini, and Matthew the Pumpkin (picked far too early, and now eaten by the chickens). Then they swaddled them carefully and ended up dressing them in doll clothes. It was very Sophie's Squash only with a little less attachment, thankfully. I'm hoping our winter squash plants do well, because they really do end up playing with squash and gourds a ridiculous amount in the fall. I love it, because they're outdoor "toys" that are temporary and seasonal, so it's exciting every year seeing what grows and seeing how they choose to play with them! Exciting and weird, I suppose. But we're homeschoolers, so I suppose it's to be expected? Let's be real though, my kids would be weird no matter where they went to school.