Tomatoes, And Then There Are Heirloom Tomatoes

Heirloom tomatoes are the hot new thing. But of course, they’re actually old, as in, been around forever. An Internet search reveals over 600 varieties. Many local farm stands sell them. But Lakeville resident, Parker Boal, who was first introduced to the special tomatoes when she was a child, has embraced heirlooms with a single-minded fervor. Interested in the slow-food movement and eating locally grown food, and being a passionate and committed gardener, Boal seized on the idea of growing heirlooms as a contribution to that effort.

   Last summer, her large garden produced way more than her family of four could consume and her daughter, Hannah, set up a farm stand in Salisbury for a few Saturdays, selling the excess lettuce, herbs and vegetables they’d grown — but not tomatoes because of the blight. The experience planted the seed for growing produce on a larger scale.

   Boal knows a lot more about heirloom tomatoes now than she did when she started this enterprise, but she did have some idea of what she was getting into. She grew up tending the summer garden with her mother, and the focus was always tomatoes. She tells a story of living in New York City, and traveling to Stamford, CT, every weekend to help her mother in the garden. Tomatoes are her passion. But there are tomatoes and then there are heirlooms.

   What’s the difference? It’s fruit as art. (Tomatoes are classified as a fruit.) The names alone are flights of fancy and the looks are nothing like the illustration of a tomato on the Heinz ketchup bottle: Super Snow White are little cream colored globes that look like exotic miniature melons; Chocolate Stripes, a medium-sized mahogany colored tomato with ribbons of olive green looks like it was created by a mad artist; Basinga, is an oddly shaped yellow that Boal notes is hard to find commercially; Ispolin, a red, rare heirloom hails from Siberia, of all places; Fred Limbaugh Potato Top (research indicates it got the name from three generations of tomato-loving Limbaugh’s) is billed as one of the best tasting heirlooms; and Flammé, a persimmon-colored, small, jewel-like variety, looks too good to eat.

   Four months ago, the half-acre outside her kitchen door was an undistinguished plot of grass and weeds. Now it is home to row after row of neatly ordered plants, climbing up latticed wood frames. And when Boal arranges the tomatoes for market, there is basket after basket of gorgeous, unique fruit. But these are the fruits of a lot of labor. Her son, Peter, dug 80 postholes in two days for the fence that surrounds the garden from invading deer. Her husband, Sandy, and she built the lattice wood supports by hand, all 36 of them. And Boal grew all the plants by seed, starting them off in Freund’s Farm Market cow pots (the good news there is when it was time to put them in the ground, it was pot and all). At the end of each row a lush basil plant stands sentinel. Basil is, of course, a natural companion of tomatoes on the plate, but apparently, it also discourages pests from invading the garden. Not however the hornworms, by her description a prehistoric-looking insect, five inches long and a finger-width’s wide, that are as repellant to look at as they are difficult to get rid of. (We’ll spare you the nasty details.)  Boal discovered, after much trial and error and Internet research, that another plague on her plants was related to a magnesium deficiency in the soil. (The solution was a tablespoon of Epsom salts sprinkled around the base of each plant.) And after all that, when Boal picks the tomatoes, if they are not as wonderful as she thinks they should be, she won’t sell them. Neither Black Crim nor Thai Pink Egg passed her taste test.

   That still leaves more than 45 varieties for customers to choose from. In addition to selling to local restaurants, Boal has an agreement with LaBonne’s Markets and her fruit (and basil) are appearing at all three locations under the banner of Green Hollow Farm. Boal is making deliveries three times a week with a wide variety of color, size and shape, which is good because tomatoes should be bought as close to fresh picked as possible and eaten within days. They should never, ever be refrigerated.

Interested individuals who can’t make it to LaBonnes’s may contact Boal at: parkerstomatoes@gmail.com.