Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer
 | By Tim Stark Broadway, 2008, Hardcover Customer Rating: 10 reviews Recommend |
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Situated beautifully at the intersection of Michael Pollan, Ruth Reichl, and Barbara Kingsolver, Heirloom is an inspiring, elegiac, and gorgeously written memoir about rediscovering an older and still vital way of life.
Fourteen years ago, Tim Stark was living in Brooklyn, working days as a management consultant, and writing unpublished short stories by night. One evening, chancing upon a Dumpster full of discarded lumber, he carried the lumber home and built a germination rack for thousands of heirloom tomato seedlings. His crop soon outgrew the brownstone in which it had sprouted, forcing him to cart the seedlings to his family’s farm in Pennsylvania, where they were transplanted into the ground by hand. When favorable weather brought in a bumper crop, Tim hauled his unusual tomatoes to New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket, at a time when the tomato was unanimously red. The rest is history. Today, Eckerton Hill Farm does a booming trade in heirloom tomatoes and obscure chile peppers. Tim’s tomatoes are featured on the menus of New York City’s most demanding chefs and have even made the cover of Gourmet magazine.
Title: Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer
Sales Rank: 95283 in Books
Author: Tim Stark
Publisher: Broadway, 1 edition, 2008-07-15, Hardcover, 240 pages, ISBN: 0767927060
Package Dimensions: 8.35 x 5.67 x 0.94 inches, 0.84 pounds
- Takes a pretty grim turn...
- Let me preface my review by saying that I only finished about 2/3 of this book (I'll get to that in a minute) so I'm basing my comments on that part. I agree with pieces of the other reviews. I found this book to be entertaining at times but certainly a bit meandering and repetitive in others. But still I was finding it to be an enjoyable memoir overall until part way through I came… More reviews
- Worthwhile and surprising read
- This is a memoir by a man who quit a lucrative career in business to grow heirloom tomatoes and other gourmet produce on his own farm in Pennsylvania.
This was a fun read. I liked learning about the trials and tribulations of trying to grow produce without any use of pesticides. Tim and his friends more or less had to do everything by hand, including picking off… More reviews
- Exploits of crazy, for gardeners/foodies who need to know
- Heirloom is perhaps best served in the hands of obsessed foodies who crave behind-the-scenes tours of small organic farms, beyond what Food & Wine magazine teases. For gardeners, Heirloom is welcome and amusing company of crazy.
Without pretense or rehearsed narrative, Stark recounts his humble initiations into organic farming (and supplying top chefs in NYC), knowing very little… More reviews
- A Good Read
- I enjoyed this book. It's a quick read, well-written, very personal. If you're interested in knowing more about the reasons a person might become an heirloom tomato farmer when the economic indicators for such a major life change are all negative, read this book. The perils of small-farming are apparent, but somehow, so are the joys. I read the book… More reviews
- Requirement: be a Foodie....
- Chances are, you'll find this book a disappointment if you're not a Foodie. I'm borderline, so the book had it's moments for me. It's fairly repetitive, as if the author wrote chapters independent of each other without making any references back to previous writings. If you live in the NY Metro area (which I do), you'll have a deeper appreciation for the locales… More reviews
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- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients
