SELLMEYER FARM NEWSLETTER

Yesterday was box day. I hope everyone is enjoying. If you have any questions please ask as we want everyone to have a good experience and for their produce not to go to waste. We try to pick everything ripe and ready to eat, but sometimes we have to pick a little under ripe because if we wait a couple of days till it's ripe we don't have a market for it.
The tomatoes are starting to come on and we raise the regular hybrid red tomatoes, but we also raise heirloom tomatoes. Now for those of you who don't know what heirloom tomatoes are they are the original old fashioned open pollinated varieties. They come in all shapes (oblong, fluted, pear, etc.) and colors. And by colors I mean everything from red to dark burgundy, reddish brown to yellow, orange, white, multi colored (yellow with red, red with green, etc.) to neon green and also pinks! The heirlooms are sometime referred to as the ugly tomato. This refers to the fact that they don't ripen uniformally and that they tend to crack and split and are more prone to diseases. You may be asking then why raise them and the answer is TASTE!!! Over the years breeders have bred tomatoes to ripen uni formally and have the same uniform shape and color, be disease resistant and firmer for shipping purposes. This is what the grocery stores want perfect uniform fruit! But in the breeding process for these traits one has been left behind and that is the one of taste. Now that being said, again we sometimes pick them a little under ripe, so the main way to tell if they are ripe is by feel. One of the best tasting heirlooms we have is the Ananas Noir. Now if you wait for it to look ripe you will miss out on it. It will come to you looking like an unripe tomato that is starting to go rotten! It is a brownish red with sickly green coloring (hence the "Ugly Tomato" description!), but it is ripe, and when you cut into it the green part is almost a neon green color, but the taste is unbelievable! Now that I've got you all excited about that one it will be a little later before you get it but there are other heirlooms that are starting to come on, so just have an open mind about them and close your eyes if you have to and take a bite!