An Homage To The Heirloom Tomato
By Michael Sznajderman
As fall approaches and prognosticating about football season replaces the siesta by the swimming pool, let’s take a moment to appreciate one pleasure that will soon be gone from our plates till next summer: the heirloom tomato.
Jacob and Payton Sandlin know the joys, hard work and heartache that come with delivering heirloom tomatoes to hungry customers at Birmingham’s Pepper Place farmer’s market. They produce about 25 varieties over the course of the summer and sell heirloom tomato plants in the spring.
“They’re a struggle,” Jacob Sandlin acknowledges as he spies the baskets of heirlooms surrounding him in his market stall. Unlike the sturdy, hybridized tomatoes grown on giant commercial farms and shipped by the tens of thousands coast to coast, heirlooms are typically thinner-skinned, more susceptible to bruising, less resistant to pests than their genetically modified brethren, less forgiving of weather extremes, and more prone to drop off the stem, just to name a few complications.Some folks might also be put off by their lack of consistency. They come in countless shapes, different sizes and varying colors, from bright red to shades of orange, green and purple, and combinations therein – even striped. Some are puckered or pitted, some smooth, some bumpy, often with cracks and crevices.
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