My dad and I working in the West Chester PA garden - late 1980s when I was just dipping into heirlooms
Here is one of the guest articles that Carolyn discussed in her C and C’s column, by a Mennonite farmer she met when speaking at Rodale. It is charming, and still relevant today. Enjoy!
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Heirloom Tomatoes, Heirloom Values
James Weaver
The interest in heirloom vegetables, and specifically heirloom tomatoes, has grown phenomenally in the last few years. Gourmet chefs from upscale New York restaurants ask for heirloom tomato varieties by name at the Union Square Greenmarket. Heirloom seed catalog offerings are diversifying and becoming more colorful. Likewise, farmers markets sell expanding lines of name-brand heirloom tomatoes and home gardeners are tilling under strips of lawn to make room for those “can’t be without ‘em” varieties.
How did all of this get started? Why the renewed interest in heirlooms? Just what is an heirloom vegetable? An heirloom seed is not the same thing to everyone. The dictionary tells us that an heirloom is a piece of personal property that has been in a family for a long time. A reporter that came out to our farm three years ago to do an article on our heirloom tomatoes said she had been sent because they heard of a guy out by Kutztown who “had tomato seeds 100 years old”. To the keepers of large seed banks, heirloom vegetable seeds are a hedge against possible massive crop failure due to plant diseases in the closely related hybrid seed lines. To seed saving organizations, heirloom seed proliferation promises the continuation of wonderful old varieties that are in danger of extinction. To third world and to former Iron Curtain countries, the unavailability of hybrid seed dictated a continuation of the old-time practice of saving seed. For ethnic people and older generations, heirlooms have associations with former places or people, associations which ensure continuation of these heirloom varieties. To home gardeners, heirlooms make it possible to grow an amazing diversity of taste, shape and color.
For many farmers, heirlooms hold no promise. They are felt to be disease prone and low on yield. There’s no money to be made on them. They can’t be shipped. “We need a modern tomato for modern times!” they demand. But for market farmers like myself, heirlooms are a drawing card, providing an opportunity to offer something new. “Such color, such shape” the customers comment. “How pretty! How ugly!” They are fascinated. “Ach, look”, says a Pennsylvania Dutch lady, “my grandmother grew that tomato but called it the apple tomato. It is gute”. An Italian man says excitedly, “oh looka! The sausage tomato. My Uncle bring it over from Italy”. After some prompting, even the more timid customers dare to try them. They are pleasantly surprised. And before too long, they are convinced that there is nothing better. The rewarding variety of tastes…rich, winey, mellow, mild, full, fruity, plumy, lemony. The visual reward is a kaleidoscope of shape and color. The mother of Tim Stark, a friend of mine who also grows heirloom tomatoes, calls his tomato patch the magical garden. Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Uncle Ike’s Big Red, Grandma Mary’s, Radiator Charlie’s, Italian Long, Large Pink Bulgarian, Russian Persimmon, Tiffen Mennonite, Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, Eva Purple Ball, Striped German, Black Krim. The list goes on and on.
The most enduring reward to me of growing heirloom varieties is the rich variety of people they attract to my farm stand; people with a common interest in gourmet and exotic food or in saving seeds. If my heirloom varieties have enriched the lives of others, the new and interesting people I have come in contact with at the farm stand, and the enduring friendships that have resulted, have enriched my life.
How did we, here at Meadow View Farms, become interested in heirloom varieties? Well, the fact of the matter is, in our old order Mennonite community, the practice of saving seed never did quite died out, a fact to which many of the heirloom varieties like Tiffen Mennonite and Amish Paste will attest. I can remember as a boy how my mother would always let her sugar peas stay on the vine until they dried, then collected the seed for the following year. She received those seeds from her parents and still plants them. When we opened our greenhouse for business in 1987, we offered transplants of an oxheart type tomato that my aunt has grown for years. My 80 year old mother in law kept seeds of a sugar pea variety that she received from home when she married in the 1930s. They are very tender, with blossoms that have a pink tinge. Although they have no name and she has no idea how old they are, she always keeps them isolated from all of the other peas.
My sister’s mother in law passed down a yellow tomato that she got from her parents. She plants them in her market garden next to the Rodale Institute’s Experimental Farm near Kutztown. No name, no age. An elderly widow in the community has kept sugar pea and neck pumpkin seed for y ears. She also speaks of a huge pink beefsteak tomato with wonderful flavor. Is it Large Pink Bulgarian? German Johnson? Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter? Who knows.
Seed saving in the Mennonite community was done for several reasons. The main reason had to do with economics. Why purchase seed that you can have for free with a little additional effort? But with the glitz (“glitzern” in the PA Dutch dialect we speak means to glisten, glitter, twinkle) and glitter of seed catalogs and the change of economics down on the farm, we have adapted to the higher yield/improved disease resistance philosophy of hybrid varieties.
The second reason, after economics, is a strong sense of family. With four generations living together on one farm, the generation gap automatically becomes narrower. My 99 year old grandmother lives with my parents here on the farm. She is senile and hard of hearing, so I was unable to ask her about seed saving. But she insists on helping do the dishes after every meal and spends her time reminiscing about her childhood home in Lancaster County, PA. With Grandpa, dad and boys going out to pick heirloom tomatoes, the term extended family takes on a new dimension. Perpetuating Uncle John’s Indian corn evokes a sense of continuity. Saving the seeds of Grandpa’s sugar peas creates a feeling of belonging. Planting Grandma’s favorite tomato perpetuates a tradition that goes back to an earlier, simpler time.
Becoming involved, or reinvolved, with heirloom varieties was a natural development. Having never deviated much from basic self-sustaining concepts such as crop rotation and natural fertilizer application, it was easy. Introducing our greenhouse and farm market customers to these wonderful old varieties was a pleasant experience in addition to our own renewed discovery of them. Recently, we created a line of hot pepper jellies in the farm kitchen. The highlight of the growing season is our Chili Pepper and Heirloom Tomato Field Day, when folks from all over get an opportunity to stroll through our fields and learn about heirloom tomatoes, chili peppers, eggplant, squash and Indian corn. The caring and sharing of information between amateur and professional alike is exciting to see.
But then again, maybe there are other reasons for our interest in heirlooms. In light of the general trend away from the “bigger is better” hybrid varieties and toward the “back to basics” lifestyle that we have always supported, it seems to me that our community itself is an heirloom of sorts. Mennonite roots go back to the reformation of Renaissance Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands in the early 16th century. A holdover from the church of the apostles from the first century AD, their philosophy survived in fragmented, secluded groups through the dark ages. Their rebirth as radically conservative Anabaptists caused them much suffering through exile, martyrdom and economic sanctions. Brushed aside by mainstream Protestant reformers and the state religion, they clung to their newfound faith in isolated villages and farmsteads. With the hope of religious freedom, they packed up their important belongings (seeds included) and immigrated to North America. After a settling in period during colonial times, these hard working, thrifty people contributed to the agrarian fabric of American with their well kept farms. With the advent of the agricultural and industrial revolutions they resisted those large scale changes that were perceived as destructive of their ways of life. Some modern farm machinery was viewed as a detriment to the togetherness by which the farm was traditionally worked. The increased mobility of the automobile, it was feared, would pull family and community apart. While industrial society at large was changing at break neck pace, merging one and all into a world-wide community, there was no abiding consensus among the various Mennonite settlements scattered throughout North America, resulting in the emergence of many different “sects”, each of which was in its own unique way resistant to the general trends of modern society. And because they interpreted the divine injunction “let your light shine” to mean “to enlighten or radiate warmth” by example rather than by lecture, they became “the quiet in the land”. Perhaps, as the heirloom tomatoes of a former age add to the current quality of life, the Mennonites may continue to contribute to present day society. And so, I have discovered, the people in my community, with our horse and buggy and our old-fashioned ways, manage to draw the same kind of curious and fascinated glances as do the peculiar shapes and colors of my heirloom tomatoes.
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We are now into the content articles of this Volume. Thanksgiving is in just a few weeks. The year is flying by - and so are the Off The Vine articles. Though I wish we kept it going for much longer, all we have is what we have. Just a few more to go.
with Sara and Caitlin in front of one of our Berwyn PA gardens - this is likely 1987 or so.
