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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eat Local, Read Global, August 1, 2008
Heirloom: Notes From an Accidental Tomato Farmer is the bestselling book at my local coffeehouse in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. It is the only book for sale at the Uptown. The author is a farmer who grows the vegetables they use in their savory soups and salads. Last week, along with the tomatoes and red beets, Tim Stark delivered a case of books. I picked up a copy of out of curiosity. I am not much of a gardener, no gourmet, never even pause on the food channel, but found this book to be quite extraordinary.
Did you see the YouTube video of the elephant painting a picture? The elephant holds a brush in his trunk and paints a self-portrait. It was one hell of a great painting for an elephant. I feared Heirloom would leave me thinking `great book for a farmer.' Well, my fears were groundless. Heirloom is a great book for any writer of English language prose.
Tim Stark writes with wit, economy, and remarkable style. I'm a big fan of John McPhee's nonfiction. Heirloom makes reference to McPhee's Giving Good Weight, which chronicled the early days of the Union Square Greenmarket where Stark sells his prize tomatoes. Among the farmers Stark talks to is Alvina Frey, the New Jersey bean grower McPhee described as the essence of that market.
But Heirloom reminds me more of McPhee's 1966 classic, Oranges. The back cover of Oranges quotes Roderick Cook's review from Harper's magazine, "This is a surprising book. You may come to the end of it and say to yourself, `But I can't have read a whole book about oranges!' But the chances are you will have done so... It's a delicious book... more absorbing than many a novel." Substitute "tomatoes" for "oranges" and those same words could be printed on Heirloom's cover.
While the book is mostly about tomatoes, there is a full chapter about the "misunderstood" habanero pepper and a killer chapter about a groundhog in the greenhouse. Most wonderful are the elegant descriptions of the land and the soil, and tender portraits of the people who grow the food we eat.
Take Milt Miller, for example. At first glance the description of the old farmer borders on a broad-brush caricature of the Pennsylvania Dutch. When asked what he likes to do for fun, Milt replies:'Plow.' It is clear, though, Stark holds Miller in high regard, "The damp sensual pleasure of bringing earth to light. The wormy aroma of satiny upturned clods drying in the April sun. That was what turned Milt on."
Highly recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Exploits of crazy, for gardeners/foodies who need to know, September 29, 2008
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 about it, other than what his obsessions demand. His misadventures amuse. It's not perfect writing, yet it is exactly those imperfections that endear this find.
Detours from the narrative will surprise and delight. Unexpected passages include how Mennonite neighbors coach Stark in farming, auction etiquette and small engine repair. (The last paragraph in that chapter is especially moving.) And vignettes give depth and color to an unlikely cast of characters who help Stark plant, pick, sell and save his crops. Best of all, Stark unearths a family history that gives context and perhaps motivation to his madness. While it is all true, it reads like fiction, a story that you'll surely recommend and remember.
A fantastic late-summer read and welcome winter remedy for gardening/foody obsessives that crave the first signs of Spring.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting slice of contemporary Americana, August 27, 2008
Tim Stark was an aspiring author doing various makeweight jobs in New York City when he got preoccupied with trying to raise heirloom tomatoes in his Brooklyn apartment. When his landlord put his foot down, Stark relocated his tomatoes and himself to his boyhood home in Lenhartsville, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, which is within the farming region of the Pennsylvania Dutch and about a two-hour drive from NYC (assuming no traffic jams). HEIRLOOM recounts Stark's ten or so years raising organic produce -- principally, heirloom tomatoes, but also chile peppers and sugar snap peas among many others -- on a few acres in Pennsylvania and then selling his produce at the Union Square Greenmarket and to some of the best restaurants in New York City.
Stark confronts an endless succession of obstacles and problems -- ignorance, weather, inadequate and balky equipment, lack of ready cash, insufficient labor, an obstreperous jerk of a neighbor, and insects, deer, and gophers -- each of which he somehow overcomes, or circumvents, or, at a minimum, learns to live with. Thankfully (for me, at least), Stark does not dwell on tedious agricultural details. This is not a gardener's journal; if anything, it probably is of greater interest to the appreciative consumer of organic farming than the practitioner. Interesting subjects discussed at some length are the Amish and Mennonites of the area, the farmer/chef relationships that have developed and undergird some of the most noted restaurants in NYC, and the bleak future for similar agricultural operations catering to urban markets, due to shrinking affordable farmland.
Stark's writing is above average, occasionally quite good, but it is uneven and at times a little disjointed and unnecessarily confusing. The last chapter in particular seems rushed. Stark should have given the book one more thorough review and revision, but I suspect that would have been asking too much of his rather restless personality. Still, HEIRLOOM is an enjoyable sketch of an interesting slice of contemporary Americana that can be read in a day or two.
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