Merced, Better Boy, Roma, Cherry... I'll sell'em all!

For the last few years, well before I lived in Dripping Springs, I would joke with my friends about just quitting my job and selling tomatoes on the side of the road. Everyone always has crappy days at work, where they feel like quitting, and on those days, being a Tomato salesman was my idea of fun.

The plan was simple. Dig trenches and plant the ‘maters all over the small backyard we had, and then, I’d just sit outside on my roof, water hose in hand, watering the tomatoes, and playing the role of a true life Scarecrow.

I had the whole thing perfectly planned out. I even had a competitive differentiator: I would also plant some basil, and simply offering a hand full of basil with purchase of a large box of tomatoes. Nothing’s better than fresh basil and fresh tomatoes, especially off of a Farm Truck! At least that was my theory.

I would then scope out a good spot to sell my tomatoes on the side of the road. I’d have a little stand, and buy an old farm truck, to make people believe that I lived out in Bastrop on my farm, where in reality, I lived in a ‘cookie cutter’ community only 5 or 10 minutes away. The perfect setup!

I then moved Dripping Springs and we had an acre backyard. Imagine my dreams now! I’d have thousands of plants, automatic irrigation systems, employees, a whole fleet of rusty farm trucks. The works, baby! The Works! I would OWN the tomato market of central Texas.

I planted tomatoes and basil, as you know from all my prior postings. I bought about $8 worth of seeds and plants, and got literally thousands of tomatoes out of it.
Friends I gave extras to LOVED them. A colleague at work said about his wife:

"My wife loved them! She said they were the best tomatoes she’s ever tasted.”

Granted, I’m in sales, and he is too, so he may have been yanking my chain, but I chose to believe him, because everyone else also raved about them.

Then came the dark years... Like in all economies, industries, countries, crusades, there comes a time when things go wrong and the economy goes south. I’m now in an apartment with no access to planting tomatoes. So I was confined to HEB as my location to shop for them, and bought a container of Cherry Tomatoes for a couple of dollars. Oh god… They sucked. You could almost taste the chemicals, the volume growing technique had made them bland and plain SHITTY. So after that one box, I have yet to buy a single tomato. And Basil… Jeez! $3.49 for a little handful. What a rip-off! That stuff grew like weeds in Drippin’.

So as I live in this new, gloomy tomato and basil world, I’ve decided to do two things: Continue planning my dream of selling tomatoes and basil, and Visiting one of the 2 farmer’s markets on alternating weekends. Grocery store vegetables suck… and don’t even get me started on the Spinach I grew this spring vs. the Spinach with low fat E.coli dressing you buy these days.