How They Do It Here

By Kira Hamman

Where I live, in the Catoctin mountains of western Maryland, tomatoes are a given in the summer.

Gardens teem with them, farm stands overflow with them, and farmers’ markets sell them by the bushel.

But except in a few gardens, they’re exclusively hybrids – Early Girl, Better Boy, and the like – and they’re rarely organically grown, even in spirit.

If you are bold enough to broach the subject of heirlooms and compost with the elderly women who sell these tomatoes they are likely to snort in derision.

Customers around here aren’t looking for organically grown heirloom vegetables and are not willing to pay more for them, and therefore Read the rest of this entry »