October 2023 | Volume XXVII | Issue X
A Word from Pastor Dan Dear Church Family: I don’t know how your garden did this year, but for us the harvest came late. Along with owers, in our little garden Christen plants yellow squash, zucchini, strawberries, a variety of pumpkins, peppers, kale, and tomatoes. But the cold start to the summer shortened our growing season and delayed all of our usual harvesting. Rather than harvesting squash and zucchini at the end of June, it was mid-July before we got our rst fruits. Last summer we had more pumpkins than we knew what to do with, but this year we only got three. And tomatoes? A year ago, I was bringing bowls of them to the of ce to share with the staff by mid-July. Not this year. We did not pick a fresh, vine-ripened tomato until the end of August. Then, sometime in mid-October, the weatherperson forecast a cold front with freezing temps. So, we did what I assume many of you did. We harvest all of the remaining, still-green tomatoes off of the vines — a few gallons worth. Since that fateful day, our dining room table has been converted into a tomatoripening station. Covered with newspaper and littered green cherry and Roma tomatoes, we have been hoping and praying (and crossing our ngers) that our prematurely harvested tomatoes will turn red.
To be honest, it’s a slow process and it doesn’t happen all at once. As I prepare my salad each day, I wander into the dining room and pick out a red tomato here and there in a pan that is otherwise full of green tomatoes — just a single handful at a time. As slow as it is, each day I consistently discover a new handful of red, ripe tomatoes amidst all the green ones. Supermarkets and mass producers of crops aren’t as patient. They rely on a chemical gas called ethylene to induce ripening. They harvest the fruit just before the ripening process naturally starts, and then expose the fruit to ethylene in order to ripen the it quickly and all at the same time. A whole box of apples that might ripen at various times over the course of a few weeks if left on the tree are made to all ripen at the exact same moment and speed for the sake of us shoppers. Of course, that speed and uniformity comes at a cost: it often lessens the quality of the fruit.
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October 26, 2023
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THE TIDINGS