My dear one brings me all sorts of books to read. Lately she has been supplying me with books about organic farming and out of the way things like ‘fat. A Misunderstood Ingredient’, and ‘Mrs. Whaley’s Kitchen’.  A couple of weeks ago she brought home Keith Stewart’s, ‘It’s a Long Way to a Tomato’ and Tim Stark’s ‘Heirloom, Notes From an Accidental Tomato Farmer’. I love both of these books and plan to write about Starks book in another piece, but I just finished reading ‘Long Road to a Tomato’ while on Edisto Island, former home to the world’s best tomatoes and now barren of any locally grown tomatoes what-so-ever. 

    I thought to write about this book first because while Stewart doesn’t really grow lots of tomatoes in comparison with other vegetables he is a true organic farmer in the old, pre ‘gummit’ certified ways. He maintains the official U S Organic designation despite the expense and paper work while many small farmers simply can’t afford to comply – or don’t want to spend the time to do the paperwork to comply - with all that government certification involves. Some say the older standards were better while being less onerous and it isn’t hard to see the hand of agribusiness behind the complex gummit certification.

    I chose to start with this book for a couple of reasons and recommend it for several specific essays that appeal to me. It is, by the way, a series of essays each about two pages long and easier and more informative to read by tackling one a day or every other day or when ever the organic food mood strikes. It isn’t something that one wants to sit down to and read cover to cover. You could, but much would be lost.

    The essays take on different aspects of Mr. Stewart’s life as an organic farmer. The pieces can make one want to get right down to the Union Square Farmers Market for his garlic and herbs or drive one to despair over the fate of small scale, local and/or organic farming and farmers. New York City has always been fortunate in the variety of fresh local foods available in its markets. We have exotic food and down home goods in abundance, but the last twenty years have seen the growth of extensive farmers markets supplying local vegetables and meats directly to the city and this very proximity helps explain some of the problems that the small local farmer faces.

    He has to be near enough to the city to sell fresh foods directly to the public at retail prices. He doesn’t produce enough to be viable in the low margin, high volume food biz and so he has to have a local market willing and able to pay the higher prices required to produce the higher quality local goods. As urban areas expand the farm economy has to move further away from the city in order to afford land to grow on.  That land is almost always valued more as housing tracts than small farms. So we go around and around and loose small farms and production to agribusiness far from markets and now are able to buy gummit certified ‘organic’ – of sorts – produce from the A&P.
 
    The essays run from the early optimistic, “Today I am a farmer, a grower of organic vegetables and herbs, and I can honestly say that I am a happier man.”  To the, “My plan is to keep living on this farm until I am no longer able to – perhaps ten more years, perhaps twenty, whatever portion destiny allots me.  But I doubt that I will last much longer as the sole driving force of a productive vegetable operation.” Along the way are essays about chickens, weather, farmer’s markets and the efforts necessary to be part of them, knives, dogs, rabbits, tomatoes, potatoes, dairy farmers and my favorite - an excellent tutorial on tractors –“ A man and his Tractor”.

    “To take on this land with just hand tools would be a very daunting task. A dozen men with shovels and picks might put in a week of hard labor to accomplish what I can do with a tractor and a rototiller in a couple of hours….  “ Under the tasks assigned to each of the three farm tractors is, “Restoration of self-esteem when confronted with the limitations of an aging body and other insults of time.” This is a facet of tractor ownership I can well identify with.

    While we in America enjoy an abundance, some would say a gross excess, of cheap, high calorie foodstuffs it is exciting to read and learn about local farmers and their products. It is also daunting to consider their large investment and the low return they receive for their efforts.  We don’t eat seasonally these days, what with produce transported sometimes thousands of miles. We can – in NY – get pretty much anything year round. It’s summer somewhere every day. Much of this food has no more in common with local produce than appearance and even that is strained. February tomatoes have much more in common with baseballs than July tomatoes in that they are very round, way out of season in the Northeast and about as interesting eating.

    It’s a good read; I wouldn’t try to read it all at once, but I will read it again I am sure.  Mr. Stewart , like some of the people he writes about, is interested in passing along his methods and experiences. He is instructive and entertaining and this is a book to be referred to over and over as we gain knowledge about and recover some of our lost appreciation and experience of local foods.