Yee Yang of Golden Zone Produce had 14 types of tomatoes out there through the 2019 Tomato & Vine Festival in downtown Fairfield. (Reporter file/Matt Sieger)

The trendy tomato’s ancestors hail from arid, pretty inhospitable locales like western Chile, Peru and Ecuador. The tomato, “tomate” in Spanish and “Lycopersicon esculentum” in Latin botanical phrases, is thought to be a vegetable however is definitely a fruit and a member of the nightshade household.

Tomatoes arrived in Europe by the mid-Sixteenth century and have been first talked about in an Italian cookbook in 1692, two centuries after Christopher Columbus, an Italian crusing beneath a Spanish flag, was discovered wandering on a seaside within the Bahamas by native islanders. In the early 18th century, English herbalist William Salmon famous tomatoes have been being grown within the Carolinas.

But to get pleasure from oodles and oodles of tomatoes, be they purple, yellow, inexperienced, or striped with variegated colorings, berry-size, pear-shaped or rivaling a softball in diameter, you gained’t should go very far this weekend. And you could need to arrive with an urge for food.

Fairfield’s thirty first annual Tomato & Vine Festival, a celebration of California-grown tomatoes, will likely be Saturday and Sunday within the metropolis’s downtown. The enjoyable begins at 11 a.m. each days however ends at 7 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.

While there, festivalgoers could need to style — moreover a number of tomato varieties, after all — connoisseur meals, sip beer and wine from award-winning native retailers, watch or take part in a tomato-eating contest and salsa competitors, or forged their eyes at basic automobiles through the Sunday automotive present. Local bands will present leisure.

Here is a listing of actions taking place on the competition:

n Tomato Alley sampling, midday to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Mix and Match take-home luggage for buy: one bag, $10; two luggage, $15; one flat of heirloom tomatoes, $20.

n Festival merchandise for buy: This 12 months’s competition T-shirts, $15; aprons, $15; stemless wine tumbler, $15; koozies, $5 on the Parks & Recreation data sales space on the intersection of Jackson and Texas streets.

n Car present, midday to five p.m. Sunday on Jefferson Street.

n Tomato-eating contest, 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

n The Fairfield-Suisun Chamber of Commerce will host beer and wine gardens at Madison and Webster intersections on Texas Street.

n Family carnival, with ticket pricing as follows: one ticket, $1.50; 20 tickets, $25; 50 tickets, $50; wristband, $35.

n Special performances will likely be on the Cultural Stage at Jefferson and Texas streets.

The leisure schedule for Saturday, on the Madison Stage, is Hey Jude, 11:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., Fast Times, 2 to 4 p.m.; and The Bobby Young Project, 4:45 to six:45 p.m. On the Webster Stage will probably be Git With It, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; West Coast Blues Society, 2:15 to 4:15 p.m.; and Ariel Marin Music, 5 to 7 p.m.

The leisure schedule for Sunday, on the Madison Stage, is Southbound, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; and a pair of:15 to 4:15 p.m., Project 4. On the Webster Stage will probably be Blu Egyptian, 11:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m.; and Mobility, 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.

If you’re purchasing or simply wandering round to see what’s occurring, there will likely be loads of distributors, starting from Akia Inspirations, fragrant scents and lotions, and Baby O’s Donuts, mini donuts and drinks, to Elephants & Earrings, handmade earrings and elephant collectible figurines, and Geeze Freeze, Italian ice, to Jerk Street Tacos, jerk tacos, brats, wings, chips and salsa, and Sista’s Fried Green Tomato, fried inexperienced tomatoes, catfish, and tomato salad.

It is, in any case, a tomato competition.

IF YOU GO
What: thirty first annual Fairfield Tomato & Vine Festival
When: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to five p.m. Sunday
Where: Downtown Fairfield
Cost: Free
Online: fairfield.ca.gov/occasions