It started with a ruined shirt.

A favorite linen one. The kind you don't wear into the garden on purpose.

It was a Tuesday evening in late July. We'd come out back just to look at the tomatoes — not to pick them. But there they were, a cluster of Black Cherries, perfectly ripe. So we did what every gardener we know does: pulled up the shirt hem and started filling it.

By the time we made it to the kitchen door, two were on the ground, half were bruised, the shirt was finished, and our back was wrecked.

We stood there thinking: why are we still doing this?

We'd all just accepted it.

The shirt-tail harvest. The bucket banging against your shin. The basket you have to set down every two feet. The neck-strap apron that wrecks your shoulders by the time it's half full.

Everyone we talked to had the same stories. We'd all just decided this was the price of growing your own food.

We didn't believe that. We still don't.

So we built the apron we wished we'd had.

Heavy-duty 8oz canvas — thick enough to take a thorn, soft enough to feel like a real garment. A water-resistant lining so tomato juice stays on the apron, not on you. Cross-back straps that put the weight on your shoulders, not your neck. A quick-release bottom on the harvest pouch so you can empty a full load without bending. Seven pockets, including a zippered one for your phone, because we lost too many of those in the dirt.

The patented pouch design (US D1 088 415 S) took more prototypes than we'd like to admit.

We actually garden.

We test every iteration in real dirt, in real seasons, with real harvests. If you find a tomato leaf stuck inside one of our pockets when it arrives, that's because someone here was using it last weekend.

That's the way we like it.

— The Beaumont Team