Every Labour Day weekend in the Castagna family is reserved for one thing.
Tomato sauce.
Sixteen bushels. Two days. Four families worth of sauce and passata to last the entire year. It is a tradition that does not get cancelled, rescheduled, or abbreviated. You show up. You work. You eat well afterwards.
For the past few years I managed to carve out a fairly comfortable role for myself — sourcing and picking up the tomatoes. Not exactly backbreaking work, especially when you know as many farmers as I do. I showed up, dropped off the goods, and called it a contribution.
This year we were short staffed.
Which meant I was on cutting duty. Sixteen bushels of tomatoes, one knife, and a very long afternoon. My brother in law was on the other side of the operation — a little too close to my dad’s tomato strainer, from the looks of the photo.
Nobody touches that machine but my dad.
I’m fairly confident my brother in law got his hand slapped. He has not confirmed this.
Day one we made the ready made sauce. Day two the passata — just pure tomato puree, nothing added. The whole operation is run by my mom and dad. It runs like a well oiled machine because it has been running the same way for decades. My dad oversees the strainer. My mom oversees everything else. Everyone else falls into line.
There is something genuinely satisfying about spending two days doing something that concrete and physical. No emails. No decisions. Just tomatoes, family, and a process that works because everyone knows their role.
It also reminded me that Labour Day weekend marks something beyond the end of summer.
September has always felt like a second New Year to me.
The kids are back in school. The pace changes. There’s a natural reset that happens whether you plan for it or not. And unlike January, when the new year energy often fades before February, September tends to stick. There are only about sixteen weeks left in the year. The finish line is visible.
Most people use this reset to think about what they want to do differently. Work harder. Be more disciplined. Get more organized.
All of that is fine. But there’s a more important question worth asking first.
Are you working on the right things?
Because working harder on the wrong things doesn’t move you forward. It just makes you busier.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been writing about a concept that I think deserves its own honest moment of reflection this September. The shift from labour to capital. From working for money to having money work for you.
Most people spend the first half of their careers building income. That’s the right move. You need the income before you can do anything else with it.
But at some point the reset question stops being “how do I earn more” and starts being “what am I doing with what I’ve already earned?”
That shift looks different for everyone. For some it’s paying down debt aggressively and freeing up cash flow. For others it’s making a first investment. For others still it’s looking at an existing portfolio and asking whether it’s actually working as hard as it should be.
The honest truth is that most people never stop long enough to ask the question. They stay heads down, working hard, assuming the financial picture will sort itself out.
September is a good time to lift your head.
Not to overhaul everything. Not to make dramatic changes. Just to sit with the question for a few minutes.
Where is your money working? And is it working hard enough?
Until next week,
Vince
P.S. My brother in law still hasn’t confirmed whether he got his hand slapped. The silence is telling.
