By Michelle Fabio

Every summer day, eighty-year-old Sam Shapiro, former Treasurer of the state of Maine, tends to his 300 tomato plants with love, affection, and the noble intention of donating proceeds from their sales to a local cancer care center and youth club.

In his garden, Shapiro raises heirloom, Early Girl, Big Bite, and Better Boy, putting two shovelfuls of compost in each hole, he says.

When they’re good and ripe, he offers them to passersby at the end of his driveway, where he keeps a box for customers to drop their dollars—Shapiro’s tomatoes go for $2 a pound.
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By Tomato Queen

Not surprisingly, food scientists are starting to give tomato varieties–and especially unique heirlooms–a second glance. Or should I say, smell and taste.

According to The Sacramento Bee, food scientist Anne Noble, creator of the copyrighted Wine Aroma Wheel, first led 100 people in a wine-style “sensory analysis” of heirloom tomatoes in July of last year (reviewed in the New York Times).

A sequel held in August sold out two weeks in advance. Noble in particular explores varieties of heirlooms grown in Yolo County in Napa Valley
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By Michelle Fabio

If you’re a serious tomato grower and you want to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on in disease prevention and containment, you should make your reservations to attend the 22nd Annual Tomato Disease Workshop in Williamsburg, Virginia to be held October 24-26, 2007.

Held in connection with Virginia Tech University, this workshop is the only of its kind to focus specifically on “on presenting up to date information on currently critical tomato disease problems.”
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By Michelle Fabio

If you will be around Carmel, California on September 16, 2007, you should consider reserving your spot at the16th annual NatureSweet Carmel TomatoFest, a celebration of heirloom tomatoes from around the world.

At “America’s Favorite Tomato Harvest Festival” you’ll find over 350 heirloom tomato varieties including NatureSweet’s own, which started as an experiment by the Israeli Department of Agriculture to figure out how to grow tomatoes in Israel’s desert climate year round.

The results were transferred to the United States in 1990, and have been grown here ever since.

Those heirlooms along with innovative tomato dishes, over a hundred premium wines and tomato salsas, an international olive oil tasting event, an old-fashioned barbecue, and taste-testing of tomato specialty products ensure that you won’t go hungry or thirsty at the Quail Lodge Resort, site of the festival.

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By Michelle Fabio

If you still have a few vacation days to burn and you just can’t decide where to go, why not spend a few days soaking in the Spanish sun as you prepare for the world’s biggest tomato fight in Buñol, 25 miles outside of Valencia?

Every year on the last Wednesday of August, Buñol’s Plaza del Pueblo becomes the messiest, seediest, reddest square in the world during its hour-long community tomato fight.

Estimates of the number of participants range from 20,000 to 40,000, and the amount of tomatoes?

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By Amelia Tucker

Do you own assorted tomato hot mitts and salt and pepper shaker sets?

If so, I’ve found the perfect adventure for you.

Make your way to East Nashville’s 4th Annual Tomato Art Fest, billed as a “costume-friendly event” and as, ” Nashville’s version of the New York’s East Village.”

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