Market Morsels from Collegeville Farmers' Market Manager - Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” -Edgar Allan Poe

Heirloom Tomatoes - Exquisite Beauties

While I was eyeing up my dinner from Down Home Acres’ amazing selection of heirloom tomatoes last Saturday, I overheard an interesting comment form a fellow shopper, who was also eyeing up the produce, but with less appreciation than suspicion.

“What are they?” she asked. “Are they edible?”

I was a bit taken aback, until I looked again at the rainbow of oddly shaped tomatoes, lined up on the table, and realized how drastically different these beauties look from the “perfectly” round, red, tomato clones we have come to expect on grocery store shelves.

“Oh, yes, they are definitely edible,” I said. “They are amazingly delicious.”

Perfectly Diverse

A long time ago all tomatoes were technically heirloom tomatoes, and seeds were harvested from fruit and passed from farmer to farmer and from generation to generation.

Then hybrid tomatoes came along in the early 1900s. They were genetically designed by scientists by cross-breeding plants to make them more uniform with longer shelf lives, better disease resistance and productivity. 

Heirlooms, on the other hand, have been passed down from generation to generation - "flaws" and all.

Big Personalities

It's kind of like your granddad's oversized nose or your grannie's endearingly, oversized personality that show up unexpectedly in your own offspring: heirloom tomatoes are full of surprises and appreciated by tomato lovers for their diversity.  

They come in all colors (green, yellow, orange, purple, white,  black, etc), all shapes, and many bear a healthy dose of lumps, bumps, wrinkles and even stripes. Plus heirloom tomatoes bring unique, sometimes exotic, flavors and personality to your table - just like your favorite relatives!

Down Home Acres

 
We are so lucky to have Down Home Acres at Collegeville farmers' Market. They are a small-scale, organically-based farm just up the road in Oley, Pa, run by Paul Crognale and Hana Payne.  Paul and Hana are busy farming, bringing their fresh produce to market in Philadelphia, Reading, elsewhere in Montgomery County and even the Andaz Hotel Farmers Market in Lower Manhattan.  

To find out more about Hana and Paul, their farm and their CSA, visit Down Home Acres online.