And just like that, we’re done.

This week, our vegetables came with a note. “Thanks for everything, sign up for the Fall CSA.” Or something like that. It wasn’t a sad, misty-eyed moment or anything, but it felt like a grand experiment had come to an end.

It hadn’t, though. Instead, a new habit formed. Over the past 18 weeks, we’ve been lucky enough to have fresh, locally grown produce for half of what it would cost at the grocery store. We received a constant supply of whatever was in season. Carrots. Onions. Radishes. Whatever was ready for harvest, we were ready to receive.

And we learned a lot about vegetables. Naturally.

We are thankful that some of our veggies lasted longer than a few weeks. Some are still lasting right now. We have stocked up on potatoes and onions and other root vegetables. Like, for a month. Or more. They’re just sitting there, staring at us with all of those eyes.

Looking back, I discovered a love for raw carrots – garden carrots, naturally – that I had always suspected but was enforced by constant availability. I never knew there could be so many different types of potatoes and onions. I came to the realization that you can have too many tomatoes. That you can have too many of anything, really.

We changed our cooking habits. We were used to the typical vegetarian style of generic, quick cooking, which throws several different types of produce together in one stir-fry/stew type dish. Over the summer, unknowing as we were, we sought out recipes for beets and kohlrabi and pumpkin and found ourselves creating nearly single-vegetable dedicated meals.

We learned to cook more simply. With the vegetables we received, we had to enforce a more simple approach. We had little need to go to the grocery store. Instead, we pulled from our large stockpile of pantry staples, finally finding a use for things we had purchased long ago and never used. Our grocery bills went down – not just because we weren’t purchasing produce, but because we were simply using what we had. It was the beginnings of a pantry raid. And it has served to change our outlook on cooking meals.

Still, we have a lot of work ahead of us. Planning meals is hit and miss. The uncertainty of knowing exactly what we got left us to plan on Sunday, which often just left us not planning at all. To take full advantage of a bag full of potatoes, knowing full well that another bag will be coming in just seven days, has the feeling of a work deadline.

Above all, it just felt good to reap the CSA harvest. To me, it was always more than just food. It was more than an extended garden, a supplement to the mess we have growing in the backyard. Instead, I saw this as giving back, to supporting someone who is tethered to the ever-changing roller coaster cycle of farming, who depends on weather that has no need to cooperate and factors that live off of a farm’s suffering.

Even if it was just a couple hundred dollars, only about $10 a week for nearly 20 weeks, it was our way of supporting a small farm. And in return for that support, we received the fruits (vegetables?) of their harvest, the lifeblood of the independent farmer: produce, fresh from the ground, plucked from the vine, ripened naturally, stored on site and treated to only water, fertilizer and love.

It was worth it. On so many levels. And now the only thing I wonder is what next year will bring.

What do you do with 30 tomatoes?

50 potatoes? Five full-sized cucumbers? Two large bundles of carrots and 15 onions?

When you’re a family of three, with one of those three being just 13 months, how do you eat five squashes?

My fear is, you don’t. You let them go bad. You give them away. You forget about them quickly, lest your inner waste-not conscience smacks you upside the head.

Herein lies our problem. We’re waste-notters. And we have too many vegetables.

The week before we left on vacation, we were a total whirlwind of busyness, flitting around the house and town and all over the place like the proverbial chicken with no head, organizing the last week of daycare and preparing for a full-on onslaught of travel.

So we had little time to make real meals.

Which means our CSA sat dormant. Piling up. Spreading out and taking over the kitchen. And with a garden full of tomato plants, thriving even without a consistent water supply, we left town to a kitchen that looked like a cornucopia murder scene, vegetables spilled everywhere, covering the counter and threatening to climb up the walls.

While we were gone, we missed a Saturday, in turn, missing a week of the CSA. Thankfully. Otherwise, we’d be in even worse shape.

Instead, we returned to yet another half-share, lovingly deposited by my mother, and realized we had a problem. We had over 30 tomatoes total, now. Our potatoes had expanded, with at least 50 small tubers in several piles throughout the kitchen. Squash was on special, apparently, and cucumbers the size of overgrown zucchini threatened to take over our fridge.

(And yes, the aforementioned zucchini were available as well, in addition to more carrots and more onions, a green pepper and two jalapeños.)

So here’s our plan.

Eat them. All of them.

Tomatoes? Half went into an easy gazpacho recipe, as did one of the cucumbers and the green pepper. More cukes will be used in a cucumber melon sesame salad. Onions? Let’s have a redux of the incredible English Onion Soup with Cheddar recipe from Jamie Oliver. Potatoes and zucchini? Kerrie’s been waiting to make tiella for ages, and this is her chance.

I don’t think it will all be gone in one week. In fact, I fully suspect that our stash will grow again on Saturday, maybe to the point that we don’t make up any ground. Or (gasp!) we actually fall further behind.

But hey – with the price of produce and the freshness of what we’re getting, I can’t imagine I should be complaining about getting too much of a good thing.

(Of course, if you need a potato or two, you know where to come calling.)

Tomato soup. BLTs. Salad garnish. Toasted tomato and basil with mozzarella. Sandwich toppings. Straight tomatoes with salt.

Last week’s CSA and this weeks are nearly identical – corn, potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, carrots. Each bag shows up with a wide display of colors, each week a promise of more freshness. Oh, and tomatoes. So many tomatoes.

Raw. Broiled. Sliced. Whole. Tomatoes are coming out of our ears. With our garden exploding in a fireworks display of green, orange and red, and with the ol’ CSA ramping up its collection of actual usable vegetables, including, of course, tomatoes, we’re nearly drowning in the Fruit that Would Be Called Veggie.

They’re the crown jewel of the growing season, in most cases – a perfect combination of ease, versatility and taste. We have several different kinds throughout our garden – Roma, full, three different types of heirloom – and we have a cornucopia of tomatoes spilling out on our counter; red, orange, yellow, green, like a terror alert scale gone wrong. Unfortunately, one that’s nearly always peaking on red.

And here’s the paradox. I’m greedy. I want them all. I don’t want to give any away.

Oh, don’t worry. I’m forcing myself to part with some of them. I know I couldn’t possibly eat them all, and our family is only so big. We could have tomatoes for every meal and still make an unidentifiable dent.

So we’ve been handing them to our family, offering them to friends, always with my hands over my eyes, my fingers crossed behind my back, unable to believe the words coming out of my mouth. “What am I doing,” I find myself saying afterwards. “These are royalty, these tomatoes, the most valuable vegetables in the stash!”

I get over it. Eventually. I only hoard because I understand that, when we’re out of town, the garden will be picked clean. Family will arrive like vultures to snatch away the forgotten fruits. We welcome this, but I can’t help but think that everyone would be a lot happier if we’d just go away on vacation for a month or so, leaving the garden wide open, free for the taking, simply lousy with tomatoes and the people who love them.

Don’t ask. We have too many tomatoes. Yet, it never seems like we have enough.