Less than one month to MAGTAG
 

... and I still have NO ripe toms! Maybe this is a good sign that the harvest will be in full swing by Aug.16.

But it's still time to get serious about preparing for the fest. I will search through my big bag of leftover supplies from last year (plasticware, foil, etc.) and see what we're low on.

And there's that nagging question of how to improve the judging of the best tasting tomato. Greg F. had a penny jar method that sounded interesting. Perhaps he can explain it for us in a post.

Thank goodness that judging the largest tomato is easy!

Cecilia and all,

Here's my take on the penny method of tomato taste Judging. The problem with last year was counting up the votes. It takes time and can be frustrating. The answer: Judge by weight instead of counting.

1. Place a jar of pennies one of the tables and tell folks to take a hand full.
2. Tomatoes that are to be judged are partially cut and leaft on a paper plate with the variety name written on the plate. This is how we did it last year. Add to this a cup with the name of the tomato variety written on the cup a place it next to its respective tomato plate.
3. As folks taste the tomatoes they can give a tomato 0, 1, 2 or 3 pennies. If the tomato is good give it 1 penny. If a tomato is great give it 2 pennies. If the tomato is in your top 3 give it 3 pennies.
4. When it comes time to judge we will do a visual inspection of the cups to see which ones seem to have collected a bunch and take those for judging while ignoring the obvious losers.
5. Finally we will weigh the cups to see which one is the heaviest, second heaviest ect. The heaviest wins first prize! There will be awards for the top 5

This will make Cecilia's MAGTAG experience much less stressful ;-)

Not to mention, we will have awards, possibly produced by Annbert for biggest tomato and family who traveled the farest and other things.

Greg

Thanks, Greg! I like your solution.

Two thoughts, though -

1. The earlier you get to the park, the longer your tomatoes will be available for judging (unless we start the tasting at a specific time).

2. New pennies weigh less than old pennies! I think the feds went with the zinc combo in the 80s, though, so it's unlikely that we'll get any old ones. (Just giving you a hard time.)