THE BEGINNING
My father is a farmer, and my Northern California childhood was spent being spoiled on the wonderful produce that he grew. (Even now, he’ll bring me boxes of blood oranges and avocados whenever he visits.) In the past, he’s worked with prestigious Napa wineries like Frog’s Leap, Fetzer, and Kendall-Jackson, and he’s gardened for Steve Jobs. He is also responsible for creating many beautiful and delicious tomatoes, and has a habit of naming them after things close to his heart. Like Burning Spear, named after the reggae legend. Or Marz Round Green, named after my half-brother. And Niya Belle, named after my half-sister. For most of my childhood, however, there was not a tomato named after me—a fact I liked to constantly remind him. “Where’s my tomato?” I asked him constantly. “Dad, when will I get my own tomato?”
Five years ago, my questions were answered: Dad presented me with “Jesse’s tomato,” a medium-sized—which made sense, since I’m the middle child—red paste tomato that tasted amazing. I needed to know about my tomato—its lineage, its family history—and I had no idea how all these tomatoes that my dad had bred had come to be. Tomatoes could be “promiscuous,” my father explained: they could mate with other tomato varieties to create new, Franken-baby tomatoes. Mine was a question that, at some point, all kids ask their parents: Where do babies come from?
