By Sadie Burgher
I strap on a wearable bucket and enter the humid jungle of a greenhouse that contains an eight-foot high jungle of tomato vines. When I began working at HVH in late April, this space that’s now bursting with life was only bare dirt. The shape of a coworker moving through another row is barely visible through the foliage. The wood chips that we laid in the pathways between each row on a morning in May crunch gently underfoot. Everything in here is bathed in light.
Tomato clusters ripen from top to bottom, I’ve learned this summer. My hands and eyes work in tandem to judge color and ripeness, fingertips testing each fruit with the right amount of color for the right amount of give, plucking what’s ready, staying patient for what’s not, setting aside what’s split. One morning in late July, the Sungold cherry plants had taken in too much water, causing around a third of the fruits to split. I took them home and made pasta for dinner. What can’t be sold can still be saucy.
The deliciously fragrant “tomato leaf” scent actually comes from the tar-like substance on the plant’s stalks, not leaves, and within a few minutes, my thumb and index finger will be stained greenish black from touching it. I used to wear gloves for tomato tasks, but now I don’t mind my hands showing evidence of this work. Shades of orange, gold, red, green, and pink pass through my hands into the bucket. Tender branches reach down and brush my arms as I pass. Every so often, I kiss a leaf and tell the plants they’re doing amazing, and they really are for producing such abundance of color and flavor.
A full belly bucket weighs heavy on the back and shoulders, and last week Nolan called from across the greenhouse, “I don’t know how pregnant women do it!” When the rows have been picked clean, the contents are weighed, placed in aerated blue trays, and stacked in the back of our trusty Kawasaki Mule. The large walk-in cooler is too cold for these tender fruits, so we shuttle them to a smaller, warmer cooler dubbed Tomato Town, where they’ll await their day for market or wholesale delivery.
It’s late August already, and despite the high stacks of trays we log each harvest day, this abundance will slow and eventually stop over the next several weeks, just as the strawberries, sugar snap peas, and cucumbers have already come and gone. For the next few weeks, though, I’ll continue to treasure these mornings among the tomato plants.