Rutland Herald | February 10,2015
CAROL TASHIE and DENNIS DUHAIME 

CIRCLES OF COMMUNITY | By JOANNA TEBBS YOUNG
Rutland Reader  - November 26, 2014 


Whether it is from behind their table of beautifully displayed vegetables at the farmers market or under a tent on Radical Roots Farm, Carol Tashie and Dennis Duhaime always have a smile to go with their offerings of green (or purple or yellow or orange) goodness — the gifts of the Earth they believe to be the literal roots of growth and revitalization in our community.

For the past three summers, while picking up my family’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share from the farm on Creek Road, I have spent a few minutes of each Monday evening in the bubble of effervescence that is Carol Tashie. Knowing every one of her 80 CSA members by name, along with our children and probably our pets, too, Tashie greets us, asks how we are doing and makes sure we all know each other, while informing us what the heck we are meant to do with that vegetable that resembles Medusa (it’s called celeriac and is quite yummy in a stir-fry). When he’s not off in the field harvesting, Duhaime quietly says “hello” as he restocks the bins of produce.

“Neither of us had any significant farming experience before starting Radical Roots Farm,” says Tashie, who was previously a teacher at various schools throughout New England and the Northwest, including the University of New Hampshire for 15 years. Duhaime was in the lumber industry before working as produce manager at Rutland Food Co-op for two years.

“We were searching for a community we could call home,” Tashie explains. “We arrived in Rutland in January 2005, after attending SolarFest in the summer of 2004. After exploring the city and meeting some of its residents, we decided Rutland was the community for us. It is surrounded by beautiful and bountiful agricultural and recreational lands, and moving forward with vibrancy and innovation.”

In 2007, increasingly involved in one such innovation, the rapidly developing “locavore” movement, Tashie and Duhaime began growing their own food on a small parcel of land. With Duhaime taking the lead on the construction and Carol contributing her skills to funding and community support, the couple helped develop Rutland’s first winter farmers market, then in the space behind the Food Co-op. And when offered the opportunity to lease additional acres on the Ashcroft-Billings land on Creek Road, Tashie and Duhaime decided to dedicate their careers to organic farming. And so Radical Roots Farm was born.

Tashie says she and Duhaime are “learning and growing every day. Making mistakes, trying new things and recognizing our limitations are the realities of every farmer,” she says. And while over the past five years of farming they have been educated by the “generous and forgiving but also demanding and unpredictable” Mother Nature, they are very grateful to the experienced farmers “who offer friendship and support,” and to the educational opportunities provided by the Rutland Area Farm and Food Link.

It is with this support and their own hard work that Tashie and Duhaime have been able to achieve what they have. “We are very proud of the high-quality, nutritious and delicious vegetables Radical Roots Farm is able to produce on a relatively small parcel of land,” which they proudly share with their CSA members and hundreds of customers of the winter and summer farmers markets each week. Their produce is also featured on the menus of several restaurants, and, “perhaps most importantly,” Tashie adds, “it is served in the cafeterias of seven area schools.”

“We love our relationship with the schools. Knowing that the young people in our region are being provided with locally grown, farm-fresh food fills us with joy and satisfaction. What could be more important than healthy food to grow healthy children?

“The Rutland area is a rich and fertile environment for local food,” Tashie says. “The popularity and vibrancy of the farmers market demonstrates the community’s support, each and every week.”

Believing that this support is evidence of “the power of a diverse group of people working together to create a better world for themselves and their neighbors,” Tashie and Duhaime are committed to this community, including the NW section of the city in which they live. “It can be as simple as saying ‘hello’ to the people you meet on the street and as complex as organizing to solve a problem or develop a new project,” Tashie says.

“Community means caring about the health and well-being of the people and environment around you and respecting the interconnectedness of us all. And thanks to the creativity and passion of many of its residents, Rutland is on the cusp of revitalization, and we are proud to be a part of it. We feel extremely lucky to be a part of this welcoming and progressive community. The people in this region appreciate and value locally grown food, both from ‘what’s for dinner’ and ‘agriculture as economic development’ perspectives,” Tashie says.

“And we are proud to be part of the agricultural renaissance here.”

Joanna Tebbs Young is a writer and writing and creativity facilitator living in Rutland.
E-mail: joanna@wisdomwithinink.com
Website: wisdomwithinink.com
Twitter: @jtebbsyoung

Rutland Herald
August 2, 2104
With a little work, you can enjoy homegrown tomatoes all year round

This has been, knock on wood, a great year for tomatoes. I planted my seeds indoors earlier than I usually do, which meant that my plants went in to the ground earlier, and grew bigger. And there were no late frosts, so I’m eating tomatoes earlier than in most years. Cherry tomatoes started producing in early July, and I picked my first full-sized tomato July 16. Lots of sun and adequate rain have pushed them along. Barring an attack of late blight, I will have more than I need to feed myself all winter — if I process them now.

My mother and grandmother canned tomatoes. They worked in a hot kitchen in August and September, turning homegrown tomatoes into canned tomatoes and sauce. To avoid the deadly disease botulism, they boiled jars seemingly forever. But now, in the day of chest freezers, we can make sauce and not have to go through the canning process. You can make sauce and freeze it for use in the winter. And there are lots of other ways to save the harvest.

First, my favorite technique: Freezing tomatoes whole. I call it the “no-work” method. Just place clean, dry tomatoes in gallon freezer bags, suck out any excess air with an ordinary straw, and place the bags in the freezer on a cookie sheet. I generally get nine large tomatoes into a gallon bag. After the tomatoes are frozen, you can take them off the cookie sheets and stack the bags.

When you are ready to use the tomatoes for a soup or stew, you can remove the skins easily, if you wish, by running them under hot water and giving them a quick rub. Halve the tomatoes, cut out their attachment points, chop and cook. If you let the tomatoes thaw, they will be mushy and no good for sandwiches. But cooked? They’re great.

Last summer I tried roasting tomatoes in the oven, and was very pleased with the results. I cut tomatoes in half, placed them in a shallow roasting pan and placed them in the oven at 350 degrees. I cooked them until the tomatoes caramelized and lost most of their moisture. Then I placed them in zipper bags, one layer thick, and put them in the freezer. To avoid the need for scrubbing the roasting pan, I cooked them on a sheet of aluminum foil. These tomatoes worked fine in sandwiches in winter. I just put the frozen tomatoes in the toaster oven to thaw and heat, and put them on bread. Yum!

I grow a lot of cherry tomatoes each year — 10 plants or more. I eat them every meal in season, and snack on them between meals. My favorite variety is Sun Gold, a hybrid.

What do I do with the vast numbers of these sweet cuties?

For years I have been cutting them in half and dehydrating them. I’ve tried all sorts of dehydrators, and think I have found the best.

The machine I use is the Excalibur (excaliburdehydrator.com). This machine has nine square trays, a heating element, a thermostat, a timer and a fan that sits behind the trays. The fan and heater location are key. This machine blows hot air across the trays, as opposed to all the others I have used that send hot air up from the bottom or down from the top. Either way, the tomatoes closest to the fan and heating element dry first, so one must rotate the trays, or take out the dry ones and continue to dry the others.

At 660 watts an hour, the Excalibur also uses less electricity than the 1,000-watt NESCO unit I had used for years, but both take about the same time to dry a batch of tomatoes. The Excalibur also can hold more fruit per tray as its trays are square and the other’s are round.

I store the dried cherry tomatoes in zipper bags. They are fine on a shelf in the pantry, in the fridge or — for long term storage — in the freezer. When I want to use them, I just toss them into a stir fry or stew, and these little nuggets bring a “Wow!” to the lips of my guests. If you don’t dry them to the crispy stage, but leave them a little chewy, you can even use them in salads and sandwiches.

Lastly, I make a lot of tomato paste. It’s easy and allows me to use chunks of tomatoes that had bad spots that needed to be cut out. I core tomatoes over the sink and squeeze out juice and seeds. Then, I pop them into the food processor and puree them, skins and all. I pour the liquid into a heavy enameled cast iron pot and slowly boil the slurry until it is thick enough to have a spoon stand up in it. I let it cool all night, uncovered, and spoon the paste into ice cube trays. Once it’s frozen, I bag it in zipper bags. Then I can get just the right amount of tomato paste and never waste any — I just use one, two or three cubes, depending on my recipe.

It is work to put up the harvest, but the methods above are a lot less work than canning tomatoes in jars in a hot-water bath. And come winter? There is nothing better than eating your own tomatoes.

Henry Homeyer can be reached at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746, orhenry.homeyer@comcast.net or visit Gardening-Guy.com.

Rutland Herald
May 18, 2014
All things tomato, right from the start
by Henry Homeyer 

This year I met a life-long goal of growing an edible tomato in the house, though I have to admit it was quite by accident. 

Last fall I dug up an avocado plant that had started itself in the compost pile. Mixed in with the soil were seeds that germinated, including a tomato, a pepper and, of course, weeds. I let the tomato grow and harvested a ripe tomato May 10. 

The plant has been in a west-facing window, and, although I did provide some supplemental lighting, that was only for a month or so. I don’t know what kind of tomato it is, but the flavor was excellent — a combination of sweet and tangy.

A few words about “volunteer” tomatoes: I get some in my garden each year but never let them develop because many are not particularly tasty. Most modern tomatoes are hybrids (Big Boy, Jet Star and Sun Gold are all hybrids). That means someone figured out that specific crosses of the parents would produce a tomato with desirable characteristics. But seeds from these hybrids will not breed true. Seeds saved from a Big Boy will most likely revert to one of the parents of the fruit, which may not be especially nice. 

As you clean up your garden this spring, I recommend that you yank the babies. 

What we call heirloom tomatoes do breed true. Tomatoes, unless manipulated for growing seed, are self-pollinating. Heirlooms such as Brandywine, Purple Cherokee and Ox Heart will produce seeds that you can save each year and get just what you had the generation before. Heirlooms are not often sold at the grocery store because they are often of irregular size and shape (hard to package) and don’t have the tough skins needed for shipping and handling. But they have amazing flavors. 

I grow both heirlooms and hybrids each year — usually a total of about 30 plants. So why do I grow hybrids if heirlooms are so wonderful to eat? The modern hybrids have been bred for disease resistance, which is important. There are a variety of fungal diseases that can kill the leaves or even the entire plant.

The worst disease for tomatoes is late blight. If it hits your garden, your tomato plants may well turn into a soggy, blackened mess of inedible fruit and dead stems in just a few days. Late blight also affects potatoes and was the cause of the Irish potato famine. 

One hybrid tomato, the Defiant F-1, which was developed by the plant breeders working for Johnny’s Selected Seeds, is listed as “highly resistant” to late blight with “intermediate resistance” to early blight, another pest. I’ve grown it and like it. It has nice medium-sized fruit and good flavor, and it matures early. 

There is much talk about GMO labeling in Vermont right now — the Legislature just passed a law that will require many processed foods to indicate if there are genetically modified ingredients. As far as I know, there are no GMO tomatoes or other garden vegetables on the market. One GMO tomato was developed in 1994, but the public objected and the market for it was nil. 

This year I started my tomato seeds indoors March 24, three weeks earlier than usual. I transplanted them into bigger pots in early May, and they are growing like crazy. But the plants are getting huge, which is a problem: They are too big to fit on my plant stand. I’ve had to remove a shelf so the plants can continue to grow. 

If you have long, leggy plants like mine, you’ll need to plant them sideways when the time comes. I will dig a hole for the root ball and then a trench for the long stem. I’ll pinch off all the lower leaves, then cover the root ball and the stem except for the very top cluster of leaves. I’ll bend the tip of the stem up so the leaf cluster is above ground level. 

The plant will straighten itself up in a few days. The long stem will turn into roots. Alternatively, you could plant the root ball deep, burying part of the stem. 

Whether you grew your tomatoes from seeds or bought plants at the garden center, it is important to harden them off before they go in the garden. That means introducing them to the sun’s powerful rays and the wind’s drying effects a little each day until the plants are ready to go out in full sun. 

Put them near the house on the north side so they get just a few hours of morning sun, then gradually give them more sun. Just like a fair-skinned toddler, plants can burn if they get too much sun. Greenhouses provide a lot of protection. And bring them in on cold nights.

A soil thermometer is a useful item at this time of year. Cold, wet soil is not good for most plants, and tomatoes in particular. Sixty degrees is a good minimum soil temperature to attain before planting. 

I don’t plant frost-sensitive plants until well after the last frost, though a few warm days always tempt me. But lettuce, peas and other frost-hardy things are going in now. I’m ready for summer.

Henry Homeyer can be reached through his website www.Gardening-Guy.com. He is the author of four gardening books and lives in Cornish Flat, N.H.