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Teresa Edens pushed back her hat, which was decorated with ripe, red tomatoes, while her red earrings and bracelets jingled. She sat down under a tree and read a tomato-themed joke posted there.
“‘What do you do when a tomato goes on strike? You pick-it,’” Edens said. “I think that one’s my favorite.”
Edens, the Albuquerque Tomato Fiesta founder, celebrated the largest homegrown tomato crop in the country with hundreds of tomato and gardening enthusiasts this weekend at the Albuquerque Tomato Fiesta at the Albuquerque Garden Center. This festival of tomatoes featured tomato vendors, tomato-gardening tips, tomato tasting, tomato dishes, tomato photography and an area for kids to draw on tomatoes with markers. Tomato jokes were posted on trees and doors around the center.
Regardless of whether people say to-may-to or to-mah-to, first-time volunteer Sidney Mallard said she loves eating tomatoes.
“When I see tomatoes in food, I just get excited,” Mallard said. “I don’t know why. I’m serious as a heart attack; I just love tomatoes.”
The event is held annually to raise money for the Albuquerque Area Extension Master Gardeners program. Edens said the event aims to educate local residents about smarter eating and farming techniques.
“I don’t think you have to eat bad food; you don’t have to go to McDonald’s, no matter who you are or what your financial status is,” she said. “People always say fresh food is so expensive, but it’s not. It doesn’t have to be a Big Mac — you could have frozen peaches.”
The Albuquerque Tomato Fiesta is run entirely by volunteers, master gardeners and garden lovers alike. Volunteer master gardener Paula Garvanian said the tomato fiesta connects with her basic needs as a gardener.
“We love growing roses and bushes and lawns and trees, but to grow things that we can eat is just so exciting,” Garvanian said. “It’s really the basis of what gardeners want to do: to support ourselves, to feed ourselves.”
Garvanian said her love of gardening began when she was a little girl and was fascinated by her neighbor’s garden.
“It looked like a little forest,” she said. “It had pathways through growing, shady trees, little places where things were growing and it made me crave that. I’ve been trying to duplicate that for myself.”
Lorette Lacher promoted the Millennium Demonstration Garden project at the event. Members of the project grow six rows of vegetables at the Rio Grande Community Farm, where the produce is raised and harvested by master gardeners before being delivered to the Rio Grande Food Bank. Lacher said the tomato festival and groups like her own help promote the importance of growing fresh produce.
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“I feel that plants are very essential to our everyday life, to the ecology of our country, to the ecology of the entire world. Without plants, we would all perish,” Lorette said. “We have to sustain what we have. Because things are so expensive to grow now, if you encourage families to grow even one crop, I think it’s a good thing.”
