Tomato Picking

Moi et mes tomates

Last week I went and picked some tomatoes at a one of the farms near Patterson, CA that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns.

Goodness! It was a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be!

I ended up being really tired of standing up, bending over, standing up, shuffling over, standing up, bending over, etc. I became extremely creative in my laziness by sitting down.

This way  I could look for the perfect tomatoes at eye level as I lifted up thick tomato vines to get to the huge juicy red ones. Though I am so grateful that I had gloves. Because some of the most perfect red tomatoes were not so perfect.

How would you normally pick tomato? Do you have your palm facing away from you as you grab the tomato? Or do you have your palm facing you as you sort've scoop the tomato?

Apparently, I normally scoop to pick tomatoes. But there is a problem with this. Even though a tomato looks perfect from the top, when you pick it up the way I do, sometimes your hand ends up in the tomato and you make a little suppressed squealing noise and drop it or toss it away from you and you really, really pray that you never pick up another tomato like that again. It's gross. However much I love fresh fruits and veggies, I have a problem with being surprised by rotten ones when I touch it.


You know what I've ended up thinking about? Rotten fruit being thrown at people. It's a very unpleasant thought. Those people in the past throwing rotten fruit (tomatoes) at people who were condemned or disliked or whatever. I suddenly had the largest sympathy for those people who were the targets of the nasty fruit. I also couldn't really fathom the idea of people disliking someone so much to willingly pick up with your bare hands a nasty piece of fruit just so you could throw it at them. Seems extremely idiotic to me. Might sound totally ridiculous, but it's true.


In any case, a very large amount of tomatoes were picked last week.

I'd like to say that it was all my own efforts, but that would be a definite false statement. The other ladies I picked tomatoes with could be Super Tomato Pickers! Seriously. They'd have one huge bag done by the time I reached half that much. It was impressive. They're super skilled. Now it could be because I kept getting distracted by my hand constantly ending up inside a tomato and working on trying to not burst into tears. They either did not come across a rotting tomato, or they are super moms who have had to work through worse nastiness in their lives as a result of having children. I'm pretty sure it's the latter. I was just proud of my own tomato picking skills. and the fact that I didn't burst into tears after the 10th rotting tomato. It was a very good time.

The Super Tomato Pickers! and me. :)