Peaceful Belly Tomato Fest

Some of the twenty varieties of tomatoes available for tasting

Peaceful Belly Farms owner Josie and Clay Erskine put on their first Tomato Fest, a tasting of 20-some different varieties of tomatoes, at Boise’s Capital City Farmers’ Market on Saturday, September 12th. Josie Erskine said that people go to the farmers’ market, in part, to get food they can’t find at a supermarket.

“But sometimes,” she said, “when you come up to a booth and there’s 30 types of tomatoes, it’s a little overwhelming.  This makes it so that you’ll start understanding why a yellow tomato tastes different than a purple one.” She said that tasting all those tomatoes can help people decide what varieties they’d like to plant in their own gardens next spring.

Erskine hopes the Capital City Public Market will eventually take on the Tomato Fest and similar produce sampling events so all the market’s farmers can get involved — and customers can taste the growing, if sometimes bewildering array of products they produce.

I went to the market on Saturday and asked Josie Erskine about their first Tomato Fest.  Here’s an audio slide show:

Tags: agriculture, farmer's market, food, heirloom tomatoes, Idaho, local food movement, locavore, tomato, tomato tasting