Chances are, unless you live an a very ethnic conclave in the United States, you have not experienced a diversity of food, especially vegetables. That's ashame because there is so much out there that people do not know about and they are missing some things that could be enhancing not just their taste but their outlook on life.
Most of us experience our food based on the experience of our forebears. It's funny but you would think that someone who grew up on a farm would have a better idea of the selection of food that was out there but I have to be honest and say that until I started to grow vegetables on my own most of my experience with other vegetables was pretty much what everyone else was eating - potatoes, corn, beans and leafy stuff.
Why? Well, it is convenient and quick. I think that is the problem for the majority of us. That's why if we took the time to take the time and eat slowly and with thought, our diversity would be expand into other foods. Thank God for the Slow Foods movement.
When Dad and I decided to make the tailgate markets our major focus, we had to make some changes to what we were growing. Looking around I noticed that people were buying the tomatoes, corn and peppers but everyone had them and so it became a game of who could sell the most. We could continue to grow those things and use freshness as our hallmark. But I wanted more than that. I wanted to give people the opportunity to eat some things that were unusually and use the "look at that!" factor as part of my marketing.
I remember my first foray into growing something different was growing arugula. It started when we were delivering to restaurants. Chefs would say to me, "Are you growing this? I can't get it from my distributor or they don't have it this week". Pretty soon it was broccoli rabe and some other things. The interesting thing about arugula is that it was a weed at some point and people began to use and cultivate it on a regular basis. I've come to find that out with a lot of flora but that is a story for another time.
Right around this time there was a big splash about Jersey tomatoes not being Jersey tomatoes any more. The commercialization of tomatoes had caused breeders to produce a tomato that would travel well for shipment and would sit on the shelf and look pretty for days on end. They, in my opinion, had sacrificed the taste of the tomato for these commercial qualities. People were fighting back by raising heirloom tomatoes, varieties that people used to grow in on their farms and gardens that still retained qualities that most of us remember as "real" tomatoes. Not only was the taste there but people were paying a premium price for them! That was when I decided that we needed to look into heirloom tomatoes.
Then I thought, why just tomatoes? We could grow heirloom anything. We are "small" farmers who were selling direct to our customers in small quantities and getting premium prices. But there were also the factors of people seeing something different and for some, a time of nostalgia. Those last two things are very big in marketability.
There are two varieties that we grow that illustrate what I am talking about. I remember seeing lemon cucumbers for the first time. I was knocked out by a cucumber that looked round and had yellow and white stripes. It was in a Burpee seed display at some Wal-Mart. I bought two packets and planted them. Not only were they cool looking but they tasted way better than a regular cucumber. Also, Dad did some research into the lemon cucumber and found that Burpee had brought this seed over from France in the late 1800s and that you could eat it with the skin on and that it was burpless. The combination of the unusual looking fruit, our knowledge of its history and our giving away sample slices at the market turned the lemon cucumber into a bigger winner for us. And a good thing too. Those babies can really pump out the fruit!
Ironically, other farmers who saw us selling the lemon cucumbers like hot cakes told us that they had grown them and nobody bought them. Chances are the farmer put them out for display without marketing it and when people saw it and didn't know what it was, they didn't buy it.
The other poster child for our heirloom varieties is the Jenny Lind melon. This little melon scores in the nostalgia department. If I've heard it once, I'd heard a thousand times this phrase, "Oh, I remember when my grandparents had those. Wow, I haven't seen one of them in years!" You then have a sale based on nostalgia.
Tomorrow I'll be spending time at the farm, readying some ground and spreading compost. But I plan on spending a few minutes right here to continue talking about why heirlooms aren't for everyone to grow.
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