Seed Savers and Tomato Tasting

When my family visits me in northeast Iowa, the real reason is so everyone can get together and see each other. The excuse for everyone to get together and see each other is that two events happen over Labor Day Weekend—The Minnesota State Fair and the Seed Savers Tomato Tasting Festival.

Animals abound at the Seed Savers Farm

Seed Savers is an organization based on the concept that there are a lot of subtypes of fruits and vegetables out there. You may be able to name three or four types of potato—russet and Yukon Gold are the only ones that spring to mind right now—but there are at least thirty different types of potatoes. The ones you see in grocery stores are the ones that have been proven to grow faster and bigger. Another example is garlic. There are a lot of different garlic types, all different than the white kind you see in stores. Since most big farms only focus on the subtypes of crops that will yield bigger produce faster, there’s a danger that these other subtypes may become extinct. Seed Savers is all about preventing that from happening. It’s a noble goal, in my opinion.

In order to boost publicity, they hold various events throughout the year. The big one is the Tomato Tasting Festival. In no particular order, the attractions are: a sampling of about thirty different kinds of tomatoes, a salsa contest judged by the attendees and a polka band that occasionally covers Beatles songs. Perhaps it’s me, but I think “Eleanor Rigby” loses some of its poignancy when performed on an accordion.

Regardless, the Tomato Tasting festival is always packed. It draws hundreds of people from around the area. It might draw thousands, but it would be in the low thousands. Say three or four. What I can tell you is that my family arrived about fifteen minutes after it opened, and we were parked in the rear field. It was a nice walk, marred only slightly by gathering rain clouds above our head. It had been threatening to rain all day, and the weatherman had called for rain, but I was hoping that the weatherman was wrong. I figured I had at least a fifty-fifty chance. We hurried through the field and toward the Seed Savers barn.

The Seed Savers estate

I should pause for a second to point out that the Seed Savers estate contains a very nice white farmhouse, which houses the administrative offices; a combination event plaza and gift store, where you can purchase all the seeds your heart desires, along with a healthy assortment of cookbooks, clay pots and other back-to-nature items; and a large barn. I’m not entirely sure, but I believe the barn used to house the cattle Seed Savers owns. What I can tell you, though, is that there is a huge ramp leading up to the second story of the barn, where Seed Savers had crammed in the tomato tasting, the salsa contest, and even the polka band. My family and I dutifully got in line and after a few minutes were able to partake of the tomato tasting.

The ramp to the second floor

I’m not sure how many kinds of tomatoes you’ve tasted in one sitting. My guess would be one, and your thought was probably something along the line of, “Huh, this tastes like a tomato.” When you taste thirty different types of tomatoes, though, it’s a different story. Some tomatoes are tangy. Some are mild. Some are juicier, some have more of a “tomato” flavor. Also, around type number fifteen your tongue says “screw it,” and the rest of the tomato types start to taste somewhat similar. I imagine if you’re a real tomato connoisseur you’d be in heaven, but for us “Joe Tomato” types it was hard to describe each kind. At the end, you were invited to vote for the best tasting tomato, and I did, although it was one of the first fifteen. I kept wondering if the other tomato types were getting shafted in the voting process. In the end I suppose it’s not that important, but it’s still worth considering.

Nothing makes people smile like free salsa!

After the tomato tasting was judging the salsa contest, which was a LOT more fun. Personally, I like tomatoes, but on their own they’re not that exciting. For a tomato’s true appeal to shine through, you need to chop it up and sauté it with onions, garlic and hamburger to make a spaghetti sauce, or include it in a BLT, or use it as in ingredient in a salad. Or use it in a salsa, which is in my mind the pinnacle of tomato recipes. The salsa contest’s rules were very simple—go through the line and taste each type of salsa. Tortilla chips were included, because it would have been gauche to taste salsa with anything else. When you are done, vote for the salsa you like the best.

The sister-in-law. More commonly known as "Natalie."

The salsa contest is my favorite part for two reasons. First, homemade salsa tastes good. Even the most mediocre salsa can run rings around any store-bought salsa, simply due to freshness of the ingredients. Secondly, every salsa recipe is different. Fruit salsas are common, where traditional ingredients are combined with mangoes or, in the case of my sister-in-law, peaches, to make a salsa that tastes different, but still pretty good. One salsa I tasted last year had avocado mixed in. Some turn up the spiciness level to “medic!” while others are mild and subtle. Finally, each salsa has the recipe printed out on a slip of paper next to it, which is one of the grandest parts. Like the salsa? Make it yourself! For the last couple years this has resulted in a lesser Tomato Tasting Festival tradition, where my family heads to the nearest grocery store, buys a metric ton of salsa ingredients and tortilla chips, then heads back to my apartment to make salsa, play boardgames, and occasionally turn on the television if University of Michigan or Michigan State University happen to be playing. It’s a grand time, and I wish there were more events like that out here so I could lure my family to coming, at least on a monthly basis.