A Farmer Grows in Brooklyn

Writing fiction, consulting businesses and growing 3000 tomato plants in an apartment in Brooklyn seemed like a good idea at first, but then the tomatoes got really good and the rejection letters from journals kept on coming. Tim Stark was a struggling writer who loved raising tomatoes from seeds and then planting them at the house he grew up in. The house was hours away in Pennsylvania.

Tim started growing other stuff too. Peas, lettuce, carrots, beats and sweet potatoes  all grew well on the land, but they fed the local deer population well and the only thing left standing were his tomatoes. The tomatoes looked like peaches, pears and lemons, they were purple, pink white and green. They had great names like Cherokee purple, Garden Peach, Green Zebra and Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter. Tim’s first season of growing went great, he had 60 varieties of tomatoes and developed and strong following at the Union Square Farmer’s Market. Soon the chefs who were market regulars started buying from him as well.  Now his customers include the best restaurants of New York city including the empire of Daniel Boulod.

Twelve years later Stark drives into the city from his newly purchased 58 acre farm twice a week with  two tons of his heirloom tomatoes as well as onions and a few other vegetables.  The variety of tomatoes has reached one hundred, He has become so well known for the tomatoes that the other vegetables just sit on the ground as an afterthought for customers who just happen to look below the rainbow of color on his selling tables. “The tomatoes were first sold separately by breed”, but Stark started realizing that if he mixed them up and sold them in box, he left town with an empty truck. A farmers dream.