A Long Awaited Harvest

I was finally able to harvest some lettuce yesterday and let me tell you, it felt great.  No more wilty, slimy lettuce from the supermarket for us!  The one thing that's truly disappointed me about this area is the crappy selection of organic produce for sale in the area markets.  It's obvious they're not top-selling items by the expiration dates on them; gallons of milk and containers of lettuce don't last long in the fridge, because by the time they get home they're already past their prime, which tells me no one is buying them.  Items are never sold out, either, unlike the Hanford supermarkets, where they would sell out of organic milk and other organic items on a more or less regular basis.

I wonder if people's ignorance or lack of concern about the food they eat over here comes from the fact that they haven't seen how it's grown over in the valley.  Maybe they've never driven past a Tulare dairy and seen the condition the cows live in, or had to speed up on a Lemoore country road to avoid getting crop-dusted with pesticides by an airplane or spray truck.

Either way, it's become even more important that we grow our own food here, and this delicious, crisp lettuce is a fantastic start to what I hope will be a super-productive home garden.