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Stress Yields a Sweeter Life
by Tim Stark, Hamburg, PA
I believe that an atmosphere of stress and chaos—within
reason—brings out my best qualities. And I believe my
heirloom tomatoes feel the same.
My farm started out as a garden, a weekend respite from
New York City where I worked as a management consultant.
In that job, the stress often went unrewarded. Cranking
out three-dimensional pie charts backed by reams of
prose, I could show the client how to fix what went
wrong only to have them hire another consultant to tell
them the same thing.
So, I grew tomatoes to relax—at first. But early one
spring, on the top floor of a Brooklyn brownstone, I
germinated 3,000 tomato seedlings on heat mats beneath
fluorescent grow-lights. Before work, I would get up two
hours early to fuss with my plants. Once, during a
meeting in Albany, I convinced myself I had forgotten to
insert the thermometer into the heated soil. Horrific
scenarios preyed on my imagination: the heat mats would
grow hotter, the seedlings would fry, my apartment would
ignite. I left the meeting early and flew home to New
York City, convinced I would have to rescue my seedlings
from a burning brownstone. As it turned out, the
thermometer was safely in the soil.
Any right-minded consultant would have advised against
the exhausting, under-capitalized and dysfunctional
venture my garden expanded into. But the work brought
rewards. The back pain I got from pounding tomato stakes
was nothing like the back pain that came with trying to
meet consulting deadlines. And those pie charts? You
couldn’t bite into them the way you could a rich, juicy,
fresh tomato.
I don’t know who suffered most early on, me or my
tomatoes. The stress was tough on both of us: tomatoes
ripening faster than I could pick them, tomatoes
exploding beneath the ruthless sun. It would be midnight
until I got the truck loaded to come here, and then at
four in the morning, driving in, the truck would run out
of gas.
What I brought to this market was a ragtag lot: Black
Krim, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Zapotec Pleated, Extra
Eros Zlatolaska. They were zippered, cracked and
hopelessly mottled.
But those tomatoes developed a following. Customers had
grown suspicious of the fire engine red variety:
over-irrigated, sprayed at the first sign of disease,
pumped up with fertilizer, pampered like a bottle-fed
baby. My tomatoes had to compensate and persevere, dig
for their minerals and water, find their own way. The
patches of black, the concentric scars, the multiple
signs of tomato suffering, showed strength and flavor. I
couldn’t help but notice how my tomatoes responded to me
in ways that women and bosses never had. My tomatoes
needed me, and I needed them.
For 10 years, I’ve made a living from tomatoes. It’s not
a bad life, even though I threaten to quit each year.
But things have gotten better since I started out. These
days, at the peak of summer, I get four hours of sleep
where once I got two. I believe in managed stress. It
sweetens the tomatoes. I like to think it sweetens me,
too.
Tim Stark grows tomatoes, peppers, corn, peas, beets
and whatever else he chooses at Eckerton Hill Farm, in
Hamburg, PA, and sells his produce at the Union Square
Greenmarket in New York City. He
blogs about food and farming for Gourmet magazine.
courtsey:
www.thisibelieve.net
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