Here’s something.  I made a pizza the other day and I used our tomatoes for the sauce, with basil, bell peppers, onions, garlic, rosemary and oregano from our garden.  It was awesome.  I have this really “easy” pizza crust recipe that I’ve used for the last year now.  Every time I’ve made it, it’s come out completely different.  Every time.  BUT! It’s still good.  Each pizza I make, I declare to Paul “I think this is the best pizza I’ve ever made!”  So I think you should give it a shot.  Don’t be afraid of the yeast, because you’ll probably never figure out its mysteries, it will be okay.  

Don’t farm if you’re looking to make some money.  Do it to fulfill some sort of civic duty like Paul and I…I jest.  Sometimes I feel like we’re getting jerked off over prices of veggies.  We’re not though, we are just competing with the super awesome, sunshine all year, factory farming paradise known as California.  So businesses don’t want to pay more than a dollar a pound for tomatoes.  To each his own.  Apparently, I’ve heard this enough, tomatoes are the most widely grown crop, with the highest rate of failure or problems.  Believe it!  Now, I don’t recall if I had mentioned this previously, but the proprietor of the mexican food establishment in which we frequent used to farm as a kid in Mexico and he told us to pick our tomatoes early, to avoid blight, birds and whatever other “thing” could ruin the fruit.  They’ll ripen in the house.  And you know what, his trick totally works.  Put that one in your pocket, it’s a freebie from Chuy of El Camino Real in Fayetteville Arkansas, South School street!  We have all of these tomato plants and we’re growing some nice tomatoes, but it’s really not worth selling them we’re learning.  So we’ve canned some, sold some and probably going to can the rest.  That’s where the economy comes into play and makes growing tomatoes worth it.  That’s why farmers grow fields and fields of tomatoes, because they need three million tons of them to make a thousand bucks.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.  That’s what is so great about this first year for us!  Lessons learned.  Tomatoes for preserving not for profit!

It is so hard to sit here and write posts every couple of weeks let alone ten to twenty posts a day as some do.  So there you go professionals, sitting in the Starbuck’s sipping your caramel macchiato, typing away.  It takes a lot and you have what it takes.  That being said, I would like to thank those of you for checking in on me even though I don’t write anything for a month at a time.  If it wasn’t for you, I probably would have quit doing this a long time ago.  That being said, I want to address some issues on the farm.  I’ve been reluctant to do so because I don’t want to flaunt our issues, I want to flaunt our successes.  But, it’s fodder and it’s something for you to chew on.  So our bell peppers, all varieties, are getting these thin white spots across their flesh.  What are they?  Sunburn.  Did you know that bell peppers could get sunburned?  Well they can.  Not all of them are effected.  Just the one’s that are on the top and get western exposure.  The remedy is to throw straw on the top of the plants to help shade the fruit.  Has it been working?  I couldn’t tell you.  I haven’t noticed any improvement.  Paul said that they even have a mold on the inside of some of the peppers.  Now I really don’t have a clue about that, so if there are any experts out there on bell pepper mold let me know.