An Iowa Tomato

...outrage

An Iowa tomato lament

Just north of Pochahontas is a farmhouse where a generous couple sells vegetables grown on their land. He encourages customers to add a few cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, or corn to their purchase, 'on the house.'

The anticipated ritual stop along the way to Okoboji signals we are almost there. The setting could be a movie scene depicting an Iowa farmstead: a big white house, welcoming porch, dirt driveway, and a vast garden.

It might not be heaven, but it is one of the few places where I can trust the tomatoes are 'real Iowa tomatoes.'

The only other place I know the 'locally grown' claim this year is true is from the tomatoes produced by relatives in Ottumwa. Other than that, I'm wary.

Seasonal Iowa tomatoes are something I took for granted until moving away for a couple of decades. Never again.

We pulled into the driveway, and although the sweet corn was plentiful, there were no tomatoes, beans, cukes, peppers, or zucchini. Odd, seeing how it was the end of July.

I don't know if it's just me, but this seems to be a pattern this year. What about you? Have you noticed an absence of produce stands?

"No tomatoes yet?" I asked, hoping it was a temporary problem.

"Nope," the man said. "My neighbor sprayed his corn, and the wind swept it onto my land. The chemicals are ok for corn but will kill everything else.

"I stood on my porch and could smell it."

His 147 tomato plants curled up and died. All of his produce is now toxic, except for the corn; it impacted his apple trees, too.

I am not an expert in pesticides by any means, so if you readers have an idea of how something so awful could happen, I'd like to hear from you.

And, how can a chemical sprayed on corn that kills other vegetables be ok to digest?

He said the nearby landowner acknowledged the problem but hasn't heard from him since. The produce seller will probably talk to a lawyer, but he looks sadly off into the distance as he says this.

How much corn would he have to sell at $5 a dozen to pay the legal bill?

I'll check with him on our way back to Des Moines and update you. In the meantime, you smart readers, what advice do you have for him? Do they have any recourse? I’ll print out your responses for them.

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Gubernatorial candidate Deidre DeJear is our Monday Zoom Lunch guest today. The sessions are a premium Potluck offering for paid subscribers. Proceeds fund the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat scholarship fund. Participants who haven’t heard De Jear speak are in for a treat.

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Oops.

Thanks to readers who woke up early, read the Potluck column last week about De Jear, and alerted me to the various misspellings of her name. I have no excuse other than I hit the publish button prematurely, and the wrong version hit your inbox.

It reminded me of the day I ran a column in The Des Moines Register with a recipe for Younkers Tea Room rolls. The phone lines in the newsroom lit up as soon as the papers started reaching subscribers’ doorsteps. I had omitted the ingredients flour and eggs.

Sadly, for months afterward, my phone would ring from a subscriber who had clipped the recipe and was getting around to making the sumptuous treat.

“Julie, is there something wrong with this recipe?” My office pod mates thought it was hysterical. Me, not so much.

The Potluck crew regrets the error.

Here is the column:

She's the real deal

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