Pass down the tomatoes

The front entrance to one of the most important places on the planet is as cold and nondescript as a snowdrift.

It’s what sleeps beyond the double metal doors of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on an isolated Norwegian island, that makes its significance to the human race incalculable. In three cold-storage vaults some 400,000 samples of food crop seeds from around the world are being stored to ensure the biodiversity and continuing gene banks of a vast variety of edible plants.

In February, a bundled-up Amy Goldman entered the facility, which is cut into solid rock and kept well below freezing. As she walked along the 125-yard-long tunnel — which has the capacity to house 4.5 million seed packets, each averaging about 500 seeds — she was warmed by the excitement of a dream being realized.

As the chair of the board of Seed Saver Exchange, based on the 890-acre Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, Goldman had traveled to the frigid location to help celebrate the vault’s first anniversary. During the occasion, more than 90,000 new food crop seeds, including 32 varieties of potatoes from Ireland, were added to the cache.

“It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life,” Goldman said via telephone from her farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. “It was awe inspiring to realize that the varieties we deposit there will never go extinct.

“There was a feeling of elation among the whole group of us going into the inner sanctum and seeing all the seeds arrayed there. Those seeds represent an incredibly rich and irreplaceable agricultural history.”

For many years Goldman has been at the forefront of the effort to preserve heirloom seeds. One of her greatest passions is the propagation, continuation and celebration of heirloom tomatoes.

The award-winning author and gardener will be at Monticello on Friday to talk about her favorite fruit — no, tomatoes are not vegetables. From 4 to 6 p.m., she will lead a seed-saving tour of Monticello’s gardens.

This will be followed at 6 p.m. with Goldman giving a presentation in the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center on the heirloom tomato. At 6:45 p.m. she will be signing her latest book, “The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table.” This event also includes a wine tasting led by Gabriele Rausse.

Tickets for the seed-saving tour, lecture and wine tasting are $35 and are available in advance at http://www.heritageharvestfestival.com.

“My mission in life is preserving agricultural biodiversity,” said Goldman, who started growing heirloom tomatoes when she was a teenager. “I became involved in the heirloom seed movement many years ago when I realized that not only were these wonders wonderful, they were endangered.

“If we were to preserve the rarest of the rare, we would have to take matters into our own hands. I started with melons and then went to squashes, but they were just warmups for tomatoes.

“I have tomatoes in my blood. Tomatoes and I go way back — it’s a family tradition. I’m not alone. The tomato is the most popular garden-grown [produce] in America.”

Goldman’s book beautifully presents in prose — and photographs taken by internationally celebrated photographer Victor Schrager — 200 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. Each tomato is described by size, weight, shape, interior and exterior color, flavor, texture and best uses.

The author also writes about the origin of each tomato. When one sees names like Aunt Gertie’s Gold and Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, one can surmise correctly that the book is loaded with fascinating facts and folklore.

The New York farmer credits Jeff McCormack, founder of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, for tracking down the story of Radiator Charlie. She has done plenty of tomato-related sleuthing as well.

“One of my favorite parts of doing the book was the taste testing,” Goldman said with a good-humored lilt in her voice. “But I also love doing the research, and I’m constantly uncovering new facts about the tomato.

“The story of the Red Brandywine is a good example. Eating a sweet and juicy Red Brandywine is a real mood elevator, but for me uncovering new facts about that tomato was even more satisfying.”

Goldman ranks the flavor of each of her chosen beauties from fair to excellent. The Red Brandywine received the rank of “perfection.”

“The two things that make a tomato excellent in flavor [are] high acid and high sugar,” said Goldman, who is also the author of “Melons for the Passionate Grower” and “The Compleat Squash.”

“The smaller the tomato, the more sugar and acid and the more flavorful. I’m often asked what my favorite tomatoes are, and I kind of balk at the question. I’ve got 200 favorites, and they’re all in the book.

“If you ever taste an Aunt Gertie’s Gold, you’ll never forget it. It qualifies as one of the greats, with super-excellent flavor. In the book, I write that it reminds me of persimmon, without the pucker.”

Goldman said there are any number of definitions for what constitutes heirloom tomatoes.

She describes them as tomatoes of value that breed true from seed, and thus can be handed down to the next generation.

“Many heirloom tomatoes are oldies but goodies, but some are of a more recent vintage,” Goldman said. “All of them are keepers worth preserving.

“That’s in contrast to the modern F-1 first generation hybrid that doesn’t breed true and doesn’t produce offspring like its parents. This is the industrial strain tomato that was bred for everything but flavor.

“If there is anything my more than 35 years of experience in growing tomatoes has taught me, it’s that heirlooms ripened on the vine in full sun are the most delicious tomatoes of all.”

This certainly was not lost on Thomas Jefferson, who was apparently a big fan of the juicy orbs. Peter J. Hatch, longtime director of gardens and grounds at Monticello, said the third president actually was a pioneer in their cultivation.

“Jefferson talked about the tomato in his ‘Notes on the State of Virginia,’ ” said Hatch, author of “The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello: Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Horticulture.”

“He attributed their introduction to a Portuguese physician, Dr. John de Sequeyra, who came to Williamsburg in 1745. Jefferson grew tomatoes every year in his retirement garden.

“His son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, gave a speech before the Albemarle Agricultural Society in 1822. The speech was about plant introductions, and how new plants had improved the lives of everybody.

“Randolph said that ten years before, no one in Albemarle County was growing tomatoes. But now everyone was growing them, because they believed they quickened the blood in the summertime.”

Goldman’s salute to the tasty tomato is a prelude to the third annual Heritage Harvest Festival being held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday on Montalto.

The event is being co-sponsored by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and is designed to promote sustainable gardening and heirloom plants.

The festival will offer tastings of hundreds of varieties of melons, tomatoes and apples. More than 30 workshops, lectures and demonstrations are scheduled, in addition to hands-on gardening activities for kids.

There also will be live music throughout the day. The cost for the festival is $5 per carload.

A handful of the workshops, such as cider making and seed saving, have a $10 charge. More information is available at http://www.heritageharvestfestival.com.

Today, more and more people are planting gardens and visiting farmer’s markets. Jefferson, as usual, was way ahead of the curve.

“Jefferson’s legacy is really profound in this whole sustainable food [movement] that’s going on right now,” said Hatch, who is currently working on a new book titled “Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden.”

“When he was president he kept charts of the first and last appearance of vegetables in the farmer’s market in Washington. He would go to foreign embassies, collect seeds of unusual vegetables and then pass them out to farmers.

“He ordered his maitre d’ to pay the highest prices for the earliest and best produce. Jefferson documented planting 330 varieties of vegetables and 170 varieties of fruit at Monticello. One wonders if any man had grown so many different things in one place.”

Jefferson certainly would applaud the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and its mission of being a safety hedge against the loss of biodiversity among the seeds that ultimately provide life-supporting nourishment. One need only compare a barren, tasteless tomato with one bursting with exuberant flavor to realize the importance.

“There are a lot of people out there who say heirloom tomatoes are just the province of foodies,” Goldman said. “That’s just not so.

“The heirloom tomato is the people’s tomato. They’ve been bred by farmers and gardeners, and are designed to be homegrown.

“There’s Sara’s tomato, Ben’s, Gertie’s, you name it. These are real people who have enriched our lives.”