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If you’re living la vida local, you’ve sworn off tomatoes in the off season.
Not a huge sacrifice since a tomato in winter is dull in taste and texture. Better to wait for the vine-ripened summer crop. So you wait. And wait. For the real thing.
Around here, that usually means about the Fourth of July. But at Cosentino’s Market in Brookside, the first summery orbs from Fahrmeier Farms in Lexington, Mo., are due to arrive by mid-June.
“Anytime you can extend the season on local, it’s a great thing,” says Bill Chapman, the store’s produce manager.
Yet starting earlier and ending later is easier in California or Mexico than in the Midwest, where weather patterns are more extreme and much less predictable. Planting in high tunnels that shelter plants from wind, cold and blistering heat is one way to extend the local growing season.
To get a closer look, I join 50 researchers, scientists and farmers on a cold, rainy morning just after dawn. We board a bus and set off on a tour organized as part of the USDA’s New American Farm conference on sustainable agriculture held last month in Kansas City.
As the bus crests a hill, a dozen high tunnels sprout from a 2-acre patch of flat land ahead. Sometimes referred to as hoophouses, high tunnels are humbler, less-expensive alternatives to greenhouses. The metal skeleton of a high tunnel resembles the shell of a Quonset hut. The frames are covered with plastic sheeting.
Last year Brandon Fahrmeier, 33, and brother Bret, 25, grew 100 tons of tomatoes in the 24-foot-wide, 303-foot-long high tunnels, enough to supply 14 Cosentino’s Price Chopper supermarkets. This year the Fahrmeiers plan to more than double production, allowing them to serve all 23 of the company’s area stores.
Although a high tunnel can cost up to $10,000, it can be a good investment. “For us, it’s a no brainer. Last year we got a $15 heirloom tomato with no blemishes,” Brandon Fahrmeier says with obvious pride.
Heirloom varieties such as Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra and German Stripe make up about 10 percent of the Fahrmeiers’ crop. By grafting heirloom seedlings onto hybrid vines, the brothers can increase disease resistance in the older, less-hardy varieties without affecting their size, shape or flavor.
And local consumers are willing to pay $4.99 a pound for what many think is a tastier fruit.
“When we started doing (high tunnels), we didn’t know how off the wall it was going to get,” Brandon Fahrmeier says.
Accessible agriculture
Dan Nagengast and wife Lynn Byczynski of Wild Onion Farms in Lawrence were early adopters of high tunnels.
“It’s mind-boggling what one little piece of plastic will do,” says Nagengast, who also runs the Kansas Rural Center, a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable agriculture.
But not everyone is eager to become a high tunnel pioneer.
When we arrive at the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan., director Katherine Kelly admits she at first was resistant to the idea of high tunnels. “The thought of starting earlier and going longer was not appealing,” she says.
But after Kelly had built a reputation as “the greens lady” at the Brookside farmers market, she needed a way to keep her delicate lettuces from bolting in early July. “With high tunnels, everything looks better than what’s grown in the field,” she says.
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