Featured Vegetable: Tomatoes

One of our favorite things to grow at Gibbet Hill Farm is heirloom tomatoes.  We believe that, more than almost any other fruit or vegetable, the flavor of fresh, Massachusetts-grown tomatoes is vastly superior to the bland, watery, hard tomatoes that we get in the offseason.  Many commercially grown tomatoes are selected primarily for their standard shape, thick skin, and long ripening time, all of which make them better for travelling over thousands of miles.  Our tomatoes were chosen because they taste great.  That’s it.  The fact that they have funky shapes, or thin skins, or they ripen quickly, doesn’t really matter to us since most of our produce travels down a dirt path to arrive to where it will be eaten.

We grow over 20 varietals of heirlooms to get the full scope of size, color, and flavor.  Among our favorite varietals that we grow are: Blondkopfchen (“little blond girl” in German), Matt’s wild cherry, sungold, yellow submarine, black cherry, green zebra, yellow peach, Caspian Pink, brandywine, and Cherokee purple.  Each season, we preserve some of the tomatoes, either through canning or making a stock and freezing it, so that we can enjoy these flavors year round.