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Have you ever wondered where the tomatoes that you buy come from?  In the US when I go to the grocery store to buy tomatoes they usually have no taste. Even the supermarkets in France offer beautiful product but frequently the rich taste that the fruits or vegetables shoud have is lacking.

In Provence we have a wonderful friend who raises tomatoes and every summer he brings us a case or two.  After that point we stop and buy them from him at his farm.  His melons are fabulous too. His crew packs up crates of tomatoes and they are loaded into a truck.  They head to the produce market in Marseille at 1:00AM to sell to buyers who come from all parts of France.

Alain grows several varieties of tomatoes.  The are pink ones, green striped ones, pointed ones that look like peppers, cherry tomatoes, some dark ones that they call black and some yellow ones that they call pineapple tomatoes.

They are grown in tall glass greenhouses.  You can see that these plants don’t look a thing like the ones in your garden.  The plants are held up at the top with cords and the fruit ripens at the bottom.  Alain says that the tomato season will last until November.