Reporting from Tomato Festival 2014!

What you might read about here below….

Lovely Tomato Recipes…. including ways to preserve tomatoes (Bulk Order Tomatoes Here)

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

Tomato Trot Race Results.

…Read on

Rosie and Darrah enjoy the Tomato Tasting with over 140 varieties this year!

Posing with their vegetable sculpture!

We just wrapped on Tomato Festival 2014. Thank you to all who came out – we had over 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 photos on Facebook.

Tomato Recipes for the Peak Season

We all have favorite tomato recipes. Here are some of ours. Click the links to read the recipes.

One of our favorite Boston Chefs, JJ Gonson of Cuisine en Locale. She did a demo in the Chef Tent on finishing touches, using herbs and flowers to flavor and dress dishes.

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

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.

The Famous Tomato Tasting  ~ Results 2014

Tomato Tasting at the Tomato Festival

There they were – the many many varieties of tomatoes, ready to taste. This year the harvest included 147 varieties! Though we planted about 190 in the field, not all are ripe at the time of the Festival.

We laid them out in the tasting barn in sections by type with the categories of Cherry, Paste, Heirloom type, and Red Slicer. Unbeknownst to many there is also another category in our farmer minds – the Cocktail Tomato (which we break out in the results). What is a cocktail tomato… not quite a regular tomato, not quite a cherry tomato, a little bigger than a bite.

If you came to the tasting at the Tomato Festival, you received five 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. I wonder if we had the votes hidden if it would affect the winners.

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. Cherry tomatoes anybody? 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 – Type, Variety Name, Total Votes

Thanks very much to our many tomato chopping volunteers, very especially Matt and Linda Soffen – who help organize the tasting.

Top Tomatoes in Each Category

Cherry Tomatoes tend to be big winners.

Results this year held many unexpected winners. It’s a rainbow of winners too! Lemony yellow, green and striped, and two pinks!

Lemon Drop won best of Cherry Tomatoes – this is a break out year for Lemon Drop, which has always had the requisite balance of sweet and tang to make it a winner.
Green Tiger won in the Cocktail Tomato category, a new variety for us this year.
Giant 11 took top honors for Heirloom style tomato. A find! One of the diamonds in the rough of our exotic tomato patch, and one you are sure to see more of on the farm next year.
Tomimaru Muchoo proved most worthy in the Slicing category. This is a pink greenhouse variety, and along with the greenhouse red Clermon Cluster did well in the top 20 – so believe us when we say that in-ground greenhouse growing makes awesome tomatoes!

And we are calling the contest off for the Paste Tomatoes, as we only had three in the running due to Late Blight in our Montague patch, and only one of them got a vote. They are much better turned into sauce.

If you would like to see the full results from the tasting, click to see the PDF of Tomato Tasting 2014 – All Results.

Tomato Trot 5K Race Results

Joanna crosses the finish line!

Congratulations to Joanna Johnson for first place! This is significant in a race which has been won by males since the first run! In fact women took two of the top four places in the race with Meredith Beaton finishing a mere .7 seconds behind 3rd place Patrick Homyak. Eric Ciocca took second place.

The Tomato Trot 5K is a cross-country style trail race through farm fields. Did you run the race and want to see your time? Click here to see the race results.

Trot race photos on Red Fire’s Facebook.

Congratulations to all runners for a great race!

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.

It’s one of the few days where everyone can come enjoy the farm Pick Your Own – here we have the cherry tomato patch where you can see almost all those varieties on the tasting table growing in the field!

~ Sarah Voiland