I Know Tomatoes.

639 419 Farmhand Fermented Foods

Let’s rewind a little bit. Think back to the summertime – say mid-September. Colorado was sunkissed, warm and the late summer crops were doing some of their best last-minute work of the 2014 harvest. It was a time of farm-dinners, backyard cookouts during long sunlit days, and weekly farmer’s markets. It was a time of tomatoes.

Come back to February: we’re pretty far away from those summery days and, alas, those vine-ripe tomatoes. You’re in luck though, because we do our best to bring you the cream of the tomato crop, year-round.

With a harvest season spanning less than two months, we know that preserving Colorado tomatoes is a worthy undertaking. We pride ourselves on knowing quality tomatoes – and know that you do too.

Our tomatoes are special to us for many reasons. These are hand-picked by local, Colorado farmers at the height of ripeness off the vine. This ensures that each fruit is packed with complex nutrients and unbeatable flavor. Our farmers know that they have a short window each year to reap the tomato harvest: a mere 4-6 weeks. When the heat of the days and the cooling temperatures in the evenings maximize flavor, it’s tomato time.

Once the fruit makes it to our cannery, our production line treats these tomatoes delicately-no heavy machinery for these ruby-red and brilliant-yellow beauties! Instead, each tomato is peeled and packed carefully by hand. We do our best to preserve the incredible produce that our farmers have brought us, and in several delicious, fresh-tasting varieties: Field Ripe Tomatoes with Basil, Field Ripe Tomatoes with Rosemary, and Field Ripe Diced Tomatoes.

Summer, in a jar – from us to you. Make your homemade winter cooking more delicious.

This Year’s Tomato Harvest

tomatoes

With such a short window to operate in, weather is often the defining factor in the success of a tomato year. This year, we were lucky to have a fantastic tomato harvest!

However, Colorado did have one “light” freeze in early September. Although the freeze didn’t kill the fruit on the vine, it did rush the end of the tomato harvest a bit. After this pseudo-freeze swept through, many of the tomato plants wilted, leaving our farmers with a limited amount of time to quickly harvest the fruit still hanging. This rushed harvest made things tricky: they had more very fresh, very ripe tomatoes than they knew what to do with.

The timeline of a ripe tomato staying ripe before it turns rotten is pretty limited, so, we jumped in the mix and bought a fair share of the harvest. Needless to say, our production line kicked into high gear to preserve as fast as we could!