CHIPPEWA LAKE, Ohio — A Medina County farmer has captured a huge national award, including some cold, hard cash.
Janelle Soja, who we first told you about in August, recently won the Johnny Appleseed Organic Gardening Invitational.
She won several categories in the competition, including "Heaviest Tomato." Janelle beat out two other contestants from Arkansas and New Mexico to win the $50,000 first prize.
Janelle has been gardening since she was a little girl. "It's been an entire growing season and I've been babying some things," she tells us.
Categories in the organic-only contest included: Best grown-from scratch decorative arrangement, heaviest squash, heaviest sweet potato, hottest pepper and heaviest tomato.
For Janelle, organic gardening means more than what she won in the contest. The hard work of preparing the garden using no-till methods, nurturing the seeds as they sprout, and caring for the multiple varieties of vegetables and flowers throughout the growing season until harvest gives her a huge sense of accomplishment.
"It's been a family thing, a lifelong thing for me. I'm kind of lucky, I think I got all my mistakes, I cut my teeth on gardening," she explains.
Winning the cash is great, but Janelle gets the most reward providing home-grown vegetables for her family, and that just can't be beat.
Watch our previous report on Janelle Soja below:
More from Carl Bachtel: