Highlights from Tomato Festival 2015

Weisnicht’s Ukranian, the variety that won 1st place in the state for best heirloom this year, from Red Fire! Let’s see what won in our tasting at the farm…

Here we have some reports from the 15th Annual Tomato Festival for you, including recipes, best tasting tomatoes from the great Tomato Tasting, and our top finishers from the race. It was a lovely sunny day with many joys to be had with all of our visitors!

Tomato Recipes: Sides, Salads, Soups, and More   (Bulk Order Tomatoes Here)

Tomato Tasting Results from the Festival: The votes are in…

Tomato Trot Race Results: Top Contestants by Age Category

Read on for more…

We just wrapped on Tomato Festival 2015. Thank you to all who came out – we had just about 2,000 guests! Though the fest has passed, we are still swimming in tomatoes – it’s the peak of the season! Our farmstands and markets now have tons of heirloom, red, cherry, and paste types for you to try. And you can also order heirlooms, slicers and pastes in bulk for preserving.

What happened at the Festival? Check out the photo album.

Our wooden crates were bursting with seasonal goodies! Hot peppers, peaches, eggplant, summer squash, and so many other types of organic produce was at the Festival.

Tomato Recipes for the Peak Season

Here’s a roundup of some of our favorite tomato recipes. Do you have a recipe you’d like to share? Email recipes@redfirefarm.com to tell us your favorite ways to celebrate the tomato.

Sarah Voiland giving a demonstration on how to preserve tomatoes, farmer-style. See for the recipe below.

Mary Nelen, the Valley Locavore, showed her audience how to fry green tomatoes in cornmeal and roast little cherry tomatoes.

Recipes for Preserving Tomatoes

Oven Roasted Tomatoes
Tomato Sauce Farmer-Style – the recipe Sarah Voiland did for the Tomato Canning Demo at the fest.
Canned Plum Tomatoes

We have half bushels of heirlooms, reds, or paste tomatoes that you can order for pickup in the Boston area and around Western MA at our farmstands, markets and CSA pickups. Everyone is welcome to order.

Fun Recipes for Fresh Tomatoes

Roasted Tomato Basil Salad Dressing
Fresh Tomato-Corn Salsa
Tomato Basil Salad  
Panzanella: Tomato and Bread Salad 
Dekal’s Tomato Bean Soup
Gazpacho
Husk Cherry and Cherry Tomato Salsa
Ratatouille Outside the Box
Garlic and Herb Ratatouille

And what we’ve been waiting for….

The Famous Tomato Tasting  ~ Results 2015

Green Zebra tomatoes are this year’s overall winner!

There they were – the many many varieties of tomatoes, ready to taste.

If you came to the tasting at the Tomato Festival, you received stickers to assign to your favorite tomatoes in any way you like. As the tasting goes along you can see which ones are working it by the collection of stickers on their card.

It is hard to taste all the varieties laid out there anyway, so the outcome is skewed by which tomatoes people choose to taste more. And I would say the tasting also favors those tomatoes with fresh eating qualities, as opposed to cooking or saucing qualities.

The votes are in…The public has spoken!

Overall Top 20 in Heirloom and Cherry Varieties – Type, Variety Name, Total Votes

Thanks very much to our tomato chopping volunteers and staff who spent hours slicing and dicing all of these samples for us to try.

Tomato Trot 5K Race Results

Into the finish! Patrick Homyack, last year’s third place winner, placed first just seconds before Joanna Johnson, who won first place in 2014.

And they’re off!

Top Results for Ages 1-12:

Aidan Messier (#60), first place male

McKenna Childs (#56), first place female

Top Results for Ages 13-19:

Orion Cable (#16), first place male

bib #73 – whose name we are missing :), first place female

Top Results for Ages 20-59, Women’s Category:

Joanna Johnson (#23), first place in this category and overall

Biliana Mihaylora (#31), second place in this category and overall

Christine Leonard (#26), third place in this category and overall

Julia Merton (#40), fourth place

Top Results for Ages 20-59, Men’s Category:

Patrick Homyack (#93), first place in this category and overall

John McCarthy (#109), second place in this category and overall

Erick Line (#24), third place in this category and overall

Jared Buckley (#25), fourth place

Top Results for Ages 60+:

David LeFrancois (#14), first place male

Peggy Kocoras (#17), first place female

View more photos of the Tomato Trot on Facebook.

Congratulations to all runners for a great race!

Thanks to all of our crew for making this huge event run smoothly!

Thanks to all for a great festival! It will happen again next year, round the same time, when the tomatoes start to weigh heavy and ripe on the vines.

Stay tuned for more recipes, stories, coupons and events from the farm with our e-news – you can sign up here.

~ Sarah Voiland