Seed Savers

Went to Seed Savers Exchange yesterday.

Store at Seed Savers

Having worked in the living history field for the last (gasp!) 19 years, this is something like the Mothership. Granted, I’ve never been one of the seed saving types, per se. I always preferred someone else to do that particular research, but if you wanted me to plant and tend a Turk’s Turban patch, I’m your man. You’ve got a stand of Country Gentlemen corn? No problem: have hoe, will travel. My wife, on the other hand, is very fond of gardening, so this really was the mothership for her.

She is particularly fond of heirloom tomatoes. I’m with her on this one. I won’t even eat non-heirloom tomatoes anymore. The stuff you buy in the typical grocery store tends to be pretty, but mealy and essentially lacking in flavor. So you get the all the nasty elements of tomatoes (i.e. the goo in the middle) without all of the delicious benefits. A nice Cherokee Purple, on the other hand is one of the ugliest pieces of fruit you will find, but for flavor, it’s hard to beat.

Yesterday Seed Savers was having a tomato-tasting event, and now that we’re only 2.5 hours away from the Mothership, there was no excuse not to go. The day was gorgeous to begin with, and when we got to our port of call, this is what we saw:

An Heirloom Smorgasbord

An Heirloom Smorgasbord!

They had probably two dozen tomato varieties, from reds to greens to blacks, from currants to grapes to head-sized ‘maters.

This hasn’t been a good year for tomatoes, as such. The weather has been rather mild, and tomatoes taste best (as far as I can tell) when the summer has been really hot. Consequently, some of the flavors were a little on the mellow side, but when we hit on a winner, man, those were some freakin’ delicious tomatoes.

And the tomato nerds who showed up! On our 2.5 hour drive up to Decorah, we hardly encountered a car on the road, but once the tasting began, tomato geeks crawled out of the woodwork. There were likely 3 dozen people who showed up. And they were all talking about tomatoey things – things I can’t even begin to recount, since I had no idea what they were talking about.

Anyway, it was a good time to get out of the house and take a few pics, most of which I have uploaded to my flickr account. Here are a couple examples.

Busy Hands

Cornucopia

Barn & Garden