The Tomato order is done………..

At the end of May, I talked to a man who offered our church group a chance to purchase some produce at a great price. He was the friend of a farmer, from Hempstead, Texas, who’s main crop was tomatoes and watermelons. He also grew a smaller crop of squash, bell peppers, cucumbers, and cantaloupes. They offered us a 33 lb. box of steak tomatoes for $ 11.50 a box, same poundage of roma’s for $ 10.50 a box, big watermelons for $ 3.00 each and so forth. With food prices on the rise, I knew it was a good deal. I talked to our church group and they were excited about it so we scheduled some canning classes to teach people how to can tomatoes. Since we are not allowed to collect money on church property, we sent out the order form via email and had everyone mail in their “outside” orders.

Since many of the ladies were going to can their tomatoes, we ordered 30 copies of a book called, “So Easy to Preserve” at $ 15.00 each. The book is put out by the University of Georgia, it is 375 pages of information on canning, freezing and drying and it is awesome. I had pre-ordered these books and put it on my charge account and prayed that we would sell them all. I offered them as a first come, first served offer, letting people know that I only had a limited supply. Well, we sold all of them and are working on order # 2. Once you see the book, it sells itself.

Back to the tomatoes: To make a long story short, we ended up buying almost 300 boxes of tomatoes, over 300 watermelons, and assorted boxes of the peppers, cucumbers, squash and cantaloupes. The order was so big that we divided the orders into two groups and had two different locations to deliver to. Thursday morning our first delivery was made and we off loaded the produce, inventoried it, divided it up and send it home with all of the purchasers. Each person that ordered a book picked it up with their order. Everything went off without a hitch. Yesterday, Friday, the second order was delivered. They were short seven boxes of roma tomatoes and 4 watermelons. With a few apologies and some refunding, the delivery went relatively well. We did these deliveries around 9:00am. and were finished by 11:00am. We have been getting rain in the afternoons, so we missed the rains on both days, thank goodness! I had planned to take pictures of all of this but I was so busy with the deliveries that I just didn’t have time to take any pictures.

Now, the good news! The farmer is considering doing a co-op with us. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will come thru. We will get fresh produce at below grocery store prices and make shopping a little less strenuous. Farm co-ops are an up and coming way to help you, the consumer, save money and help the farmer sell his crop.

Have a great week everyone!