Market watch: Heirloom tomatoes

Photo by Rick Nelson, Star Tribune

Heirloom tomatoes from Heritage Garden at the Mill City Farmers Market.

Last update: September 2, 2009 - 4:51 PM

For those in search of a reason to shop at farmers markets, here's a big one: value. For example, the impressive heirloom tomato selection at the Heritage Gardens stand is as easy on the pocketbook as it is on the eyes. The largest tomatoes, as big as a fist and so heavy with juice that I was afraid to carry them through the crowded market and jostle them, sell for just $4 a pop, far less than the amount I'd seen the previous day at a local supermarket. "This is Bushel Boy price," said grower Barry George. He's right.

Profits are a nice dividend, sure. But in the end, George, who eats a tomato a day, says he's in it for his lifelong love of this glorious late-summer fruit. George got his first taste of the tomato grower's life at age 11, when he and his twin brother started a small tomato business on their parents' Bloomington acreage, using the proceeds to buy a horse. Now 63, George's career has come full circle. "Up until January I had a real job," he said. Now he and his wife, Judy, are devoting themselves to cultivating nearly 1,000 tomato plants at their rural Scott County home. "I started my work life doing something that I love, growing tomatoes," said George. "Now I want to finish my work life doing the same thing."

Work being the operative word. On a typical Saturday, the couple can sell up to 800 pounds of a veritable rainbow of vibrantly colorful tomatoes, each sporting a poetic name along the lines of Cuostralee, St. Lucie or St. Pierre ("Barry, that's sahnt Pierre," said Judy with a laugh). Although their crop doesn't begin to trickle into the market until July, they keep busy during the market's early weeks; this past spring they sold roughly 3,000 heirloom tomato plants to urban gardeners. "A lot of those people come back and buy tomatoes from us later in the summer, and at first I thought that was kind of funny," said George. "But then I realized: We have 80 varieties of tomatoes, and they don't."

RICK NELSON

Heritage Gardens at the Mill City Farmers Market, 2nd St. and Chicago Av. S., Minneapolis, 612-341-7580, www.millcityfarmersmarket.org.

At StarTribune.com

For tomato recipes, go to Table Talk, the Taste food and restaurants blog, at www.startribune.com/tabletalk.

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