Summer, yum!

This summer I am lucky enough to have a roommate interning for a large production agriculture company. That means I see wonderful things like this when I walk in the door after work:

Yes, that is 3 zucchini, 2 spaghetti squash, 1 acorn squash, 4 bell peppers and rapini broccoli. Even with my profuse hatred of bell peppers, I feel like I am in heaven.  We have all the benefits of a backyard garden (can you say “fresh?”) without the hours of watering or mutant zucchini the size of an infant.

Fresh produce is what summer is to me. Growing up, summers meant going to Maddy’s Fruit Stand for apricots and the Farm Stand to get 6 pieces of corn for a dollar with my mom. To this day, it isn’t summer until I walk into the produce section of the grocery store and smell the sweetness of the stone fruit and the heat of the tomatoes. Growing up in California means I have always had fresh produce, but summertime makes all of it ten times better.

One summer my parents got adventurous and planted the largest vegetable garden I have ever seen. Multiple rows of corn, zucchini, green beans, tomatoes and yellow crook neck squash took over a large section of our property. We did not know what we had done to ourselves.  

After the patriotic-ness of having perfectly ripe corn for Fourth of July faded, reality set in. Every afternoon I was bringing in ten gigantic zucchini that hadn’t been there the night before. My brother could fill a five gallon bucket of tomatoes every other day. My mom was watering for hours on end and weeding consumed our weekends. By the end of the summer, the neighbors began declining our offers of free produce. We could no longer come up with new and exciting ideas for cooking zucchini (I’m still not sure if I am ready for another piece of zucchini bread). We finally realized that we had simply planted too much.

While we never planted such a large garden again, I will never forget the summer of 2002. We still talk about that perfect Fourth of July corn and how sick we got of zucchini. All my other summers run together, but the summer of 2002, I remember zucchini, corn and spending time with my family in our garden.

So yes, I love summer produce. It just isn’t summer without it. Thanks to my roommate, I get my pick of fresh vegetables every day, and that keeps this girl happy. Remember, it’s summer. Take advantage of everything it has to offer, including the fresh fruit and vegetables brought to you by an American Farmer!