Blithe Tomato
Months ago, I raided the shelves at EChO for all the books on flowers, gardening, and farming that I didn’t already own. One book in the small stack sat untouched for months, primarily because I had not yet clarified that blithe means “showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper,” according to a quick Google search. Had I known, I surely would have picked it up sooner. When I did, I found my favorite read of the year.
In Blithe Tomato, author Mike Madison recounts observations as a truck farmer in the Sacramento Valley. Not hooked? I wouldn’t have been either, except he is an extraordinary writer, and the first page, his far too long list of things to do today, sucks you in. His sister, Deborah, wrote the introduction and her name was already on my shelf as author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Like most amazing authors, he draws from his particulars to illustrate larger truths, and as a bonus, made me laugh out loud, breaking that eerie remote learning silence that engulfed our house each day. I still chuckle remembering one vignette where he tells about his attempt to do a bit of Valentine’s baking for his wife and two daughters.
I loved his writing so much I looked up what else he has written. Our amazing Jeff Co Libraries purchased his most recent book, Fruitful Labor, at my request. They were also able to obtain two other works, Walking the Flatlands and Growing Flowers for Market for me through Interlibrary Loan. The level of coordination and communal commitment to learning represented by the Interlibrary Loan system is heartwarming and hopeful. The arrival of one of the requests, dressed in its blaze orange paper sleeve makes me feel just a wee bit scholarly.
Madison wrote Walking the Flatlands as Artist in Residence for the Putah-Cache Bioregion! This might not be noteworthy to all, but having toured the Kohler factory with their artist in residence, and worked with several in my brief stint as a public art planner, I believe every forward thinking institution and company should have an artist in residence. I am still lobbying Waste Management to hire me to coordinate one for them. And Madison was one for a bio-region!!! Too cool. Madison ties land use issues back to geology and observes detail that’s rare in our digital age.
Then, I finished Growing Flowers for Market. I think people have been keeping this book secret. As an aspiring flower farmer, I have taken Erin Benzakein’s Floret Online Workshop, which has given a turbo boost to the locally grown flower industry around the world. This book could have been the basis for her course, published twenty years earlier. I wish I had had Madison’s concise summary of tractors and their attachments when my dad was shopping for his John Deere. Dad made a great choice, but Madison’s analysis would have made it easier. In Madison's view, bigger is rarely better. He is a man who seems to live by his priorities, and I feel blessed that he has shared his insights in this collection of writings.
