Add
this to the list of things you can now get downtown: European burpless
cucumbers, $1 each. But there's a catch-you can only find them on Thursdays,
when the weekly farmer's market flows along Concord Street for an entire
block, between Chestnut and Pine.
Actually, I'm not
sure what the point of a burpless cucumber is. As a cucumber-eating
veteran, I've come to expect the little organic belch you always get
about an hour after consuming one, either in slices or whole. Somehow
it always tastes like cucumber, even if you've been eating a banana
split in the interim. Go figure.
So, as I stare
at the basket of burpless cucumbers offered by Stone Wall Organic Farm
in Nottingham, I decide to pass. To eat a cucumber without the prospect
of at least a little burp would be like drinking flat Coke. Beside,
regular "burpful" cucumbers in the next basket are a quarter
cheaper.
Burpless cukes
aside, everything else on sale at the downtown farmer's market looks,
well, good enough to eat. But I'm not here to buy or to eat just yet.
I'm on a mission-to find the tomato lady from Goffstown before she runs
out of today's supply of precious pedigreed "heirloom" tomatoes.
Great time to go
If you haven't
yet checked out the farmer's market, this is a great time to go. Harvest
season brings a flood of fresh produce from local growers. The market,
organized by Intown Manchester and now an annual tradition, runs every
Thursday from 3 to 6:30 p.m. through Oct. 17.
Right now it's
high tide for fruits and vegetables. Last week found the street crowded
with stalls and tents, all with baskets and bins filled to overflowing,
including an entire tow-trailer filled with freshly picked corn from
Heron Farm Pond in South Hampton (40 cents an ear, $2.25 a half-dozen,
$4.50 a dozen). Right next to it was a table covered with luscious New
Hampshire-grown peaches from Mulberry Grand Farm. The price? $4.50 a
quart. (Any kind of fruit packed and priced by the quart is always good.)
In addition to
burpless and burpful cukes, Stone Wall Farm offered baskets of Swiss
chard, organic kale, and collard greens at $2 a pound, while a pound
of organic rhubarb could be had for $1.50.
But vegetables
are just the beginning. (Yes, I know some people think they're the end.)
While searching for the tomato lady, I was tempted by everything from
soap and flowers and bread to wine and maple syrup and venison steaks.
The perils of pastry
The venison was
from Bonnie Brae Farms in Plymouth, where staffers making their first
appearance were facing their own temptations-right next to their booth
was a table groaning with authentic Hungarian pastries made by local
baker Ladislau Lala.
And if you're not
there to shop, it's worth checking out for the carnival atmosphere.
Even on an overcast afternoon, a sunny spirit pervades the stalls, with
people marveling over the wares, dumping beans in scales-doing marketplace
things.
Lively Peruvian
pan-flute music was provided by Inca Son, a three-man Andean music folk
ensemble. Turkeys and chickens sat unimpressed in cages, attracting
kids and the occasional lunging black Labrador. The people-watching
is superb: families with excited children, smartly dressed downtown
business types, elderly folks with cloth bags who seem to have wandered
in from the old country, a guy with a notebook scribbling down prices
as he looks for the tomato lady.
At last I spot
her under a tent at the Chestnut Street end of market. Her name is Sara
Shirley. Not long ago she worked as an attorney for a prominent area
law firm, but she gave it all up for tomatoes. Well, not just tomatoes,
but many other crops as well, all of which she raises on her hilltop
organic farm in Goffstown.
But tomatoes were
what filled most of her baskets-tomatoes that weren't the kind you'd
find in a supermarket. These were "heirloom" tomatoes, purebred
varieties, thoroughbred super-tomatoes with colorful names like Green
Zebra and Cherokee Purple whose ancestry can be traced back for generations.
Since her harvest started earlier this month, she's been bringing about
50 pounds of tomatoes to the market each week, and she usually sells
out in less than an hour.
From donuts to
tomatoes
I first ran into
the tomato lady at the farmer's market out in Bedford at which I stopped
earlier in the week to buy doughnuts. (Yes, there's a guy who sells
doughnuts, but they're not grown on a farm. They're made in East Manchester.)
Before I got that far, however, I noticed something strange. The growers
set up their tents in a row, and under the tent from Shirley Hill Farm
in Goffstown was a woman surrounded by rows of baskets that were completely
empty.
At first I wondered
if she was selling a new kind of invisible produce (hey, I'd buy me
some of that), but it turned out she had simply sold nearly everything
she brought. Several small tubs of garlic bulbs and exactly three green
peppers remained, but everything else was gone, gone, gone. I got talking
with her, and it reminded me that one of the interesting things about
a farmer's market is not only the things you can buy, but the people
you meet.
I thought tomatoes
were quite a contrast to her legal days, but "that wasn't doing
it for me," Sara told me. "It was not the kind of life I wanted."
The kind of life
she wanted involved wresting organically grown produce from an acre
of land in Goffstown. As you might guess from the name, it's on Shirley
Hill Road, up on the part that offers spectacular views of downtown
Manchester to the east. Sara married into the Shirley family, which
has been in the area for 235 years, she said.
Grandma's tomatoes
Even a vegetable
dunce like me knows that supermarkets sell "hothouse" tomatoes,
meaning they were engineered in a greenhouse somewhere using mass production
techniques. It's the way to create a profitable tomato that can withstand
the modern shipping network. But the result isn't anything like what
came out of Grandma's backyard garden in those August summers of long
ago.
Grandma's garden,
however, never produced tomatoes with names like Green Zebra or others
that Sara Shirley grows. Written on little cards in the empty baskets
were names of a dozen varieties: Druzba, Goldie, Box Car Willie, and
more.
Each card carried
details. Druzba tomatoes are from Bulgaria and offer "a high acid
content and a robust tomato flavor." Goldies are "deep yellow-orange
with red streaking; the favorite in many tomato trials." Box Car
Willies are one-and-a-half pound monsters, "red with dark orange
undertones; extremely juicy with old fashioned flavor."
I knew about things
like grapes and wine, but I never realized tomatoes could be appreciated
in the same fashion.
"It's all
about the flavor. It's about taste as well," Sara Shirley said.
"And it's a very delicate thing. You wouldn't know that if your
only experience is a supermarket tomato."
Well, all my life
I'd been consuming the tomato equivalent of jug wines, only now to discover
what a true connoisseur can enjoy-carefully cultivated varieties that
produce a characteristic mix of skins and seeds and that reach their
peak for only a very short time.
Unlike wines in
bottles, each heirloom tomato has its own characteristic appearance.
Some are odd-looking. Others are downright weird.
"Some of them
have very funny shapes," the tomato lady said. "Some of them
look really ugly, but it's the flavor that counts."
They sell for $2.25 a pound for all varieties, mix and match.
Making my selections
All this talk made
me want to try one, but alas, the baskets were empty. So instead, I
went home and visited www.tomatofest.com, where I found varieties with
names that rival the paint hues at a hardware store: Isis Candy Cherry,
Brandywine, Aunt Ginny's Purple, Black Prince, Amish Gold, Amana Orange,
Caspian Pink, and Earl of Edgecombe (OK, that last one doesn't sound
like a paint sample.)
This further whetted
my interest, which was why I sought out the tomato lady's next appearance
at the Manchester farmer's market. She also sells produce on Saturdays
from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at her farm up on Shirley Hill Road.
This time the baskets
weren't empty. I made my selections: three Green Zebras, two Cosmonaut
Volkovs, and one Boxcar Willie. The Zebras were small and compact, like
limes; the Volkovs were more normal looking, and the Willie was big,
bodacious, and multi-colored.
All were firm and
ripe and soft to the touch. Sara weighed them on the scale, and I handed
over my $4.25.
Later that day
my wife and I tried them. I'm not going to tell you what it was like,
because if I do then more people will want them and there will be less
for us. So stop right now and forget you ever read this article. Nothing
more to see here, folks-move along to the movie reviews or News of the
Weird.
But if you do visit
the farmer's market, I hear they have these amazing burpless cucumbers.
The downtown
farmer's market is held every Thursday from 3 to 6:30 p.m. on Concord
Street between Chestnut and Pine, rain or shine, through October. Free
admission. For more information, call Intown Manchester at 645-6285.
This
story ran in the Hippo Press 9/5/2002.
©
Copyright 2002 The Hippo Press
