West Virginia: Land of Tomatoes?

It's getting to be that time of year again. Time to be getting your tomato plants out into your garden. It seems that everyone I know has a few varieties that they swear by and plant year after year. Many people prefer to buy their plants every year from local greenhouses, since that is often the most convenient way for them to do it, however, many "tomato purists" prefer to grow their own plants from seed, especially if they have their own tomato secrets.

The flavor of a tomato will vary greatly based on variety and soil. So if you grow an Old German tomato in Cabell County, WV, it will likely taste somewhat different than one grown in Pendleton County, WV. Not better or worse, just different.

With all of the recent interest and popularity of heirloom tomatoes, I thought I'd do a little research on West Virginia Heirloom tomatoes. I was aware of a few varieties of West Virginia Heirloom tomatoes before starting this research, after all, my family has long sworn by the merits of West Virginia Centennial tomatoes because of their resistance to blight, and for flavor, nothing can even begin to come close to the Old German. Regardless of the variety you choose for your garden, remember, heirloom varieties are usually more flavorful and unique than hybrid varieties commonly found in greenhouses of the region.

I recall that my granddad always grew Early Girl tomatoes (a hybrid) because they ripened the earliest in the season, but he would always back up his Early Girl's with a more flavorful variety, usually Old German's. It was always sight (and sometimes a smell) to behold when visiting his house in the late summer heat. Nobody I knew had air conditioning then, so we would all gather on the front porch. Incidentally, this was also the location where Granddad would store all of his ripe tomatoes. He had a huge shelf at the end of the porch, right beside of the porch swing, where he would place nearly ripened tomatoes. In the late afternoon, the yellow jackets would be attracted to the sweet smell of the ripe tomatoes, and it seems we were always swatting them away. Nobody ever did anything about removing the tomatoes from the front porch, so I suppose dealing with the yellow jackets was all part of the experience of tomato time at granddad's house.

I asked my granddad one time, why did he pick the tomatoes when they were nearly ripe and sit them up to ripen, when he could just as easily let them ripen on the vine. Chickens, he said. Chickens will peck a ripe tomato faster than a flea will jump on a dog's back. So to protect his tomatoes, he would always pick them, and sit them on the porch shelf to complete the ripening process. Fencing the garden to keep out the chickens was unheard of, this was just how things were done. Then you had personal preferences coming into play, some of the family liked firm, tart tomatoes, so they would choose from the bounty, the newest specimens, as they were still not quite fully ripe. These tended to be firmer. Other family members preferred "mooshy 'maters", those were the quite often, over-ripened individuals that were almost ready for the slop bucket. Many days, i'd see my mother make herself a mooshy 'mater sandwich and watch the juice drip from her elbows. The tomatoes would be that juicy and ripe. When the tomatoes became over ripe, even past the "mooshy 'mater" stage, they would end up in one of the slop buckets around the corner of the house. Every morning and evening, my granddad would inspect his bounty and pick out the worst of the lot, and off they'd go to the hogs. I should also mention that the tomatoes on the porch were also home canned and put up for winter, but as anyone who grows tomatoes will know, when you are blessed with a bounty of tomatoes, they will cover you up.

No matter where you live, and whether you prefer hard, meaty tomatoes or mooshy 'maters, I urge you to consider planting a couple of varieties of West Virginia Heirloom tomatoes in your garden this year. I'll think you'll be happy you did.

Below is a list that I have compiled of West Virginia Heirloom Tomato Varieties, it is not a complete list, and if you know of others, please let me know. To obtain any of these varieties, a simple google search will locate a retailer who will be happy to hook you up, and remember, if you save a few of your West Virginia Heirloom tomato seeds after this growing season, you can plant them again next year. Who knows, perhaps someday, you will have developed an heirloom variety of your own.

West Virginia Heirloom Tomato Varieties:

1884

Akers WV

Armenian

Belgium

Big Sandy

Bilder

Bowers

Cindy's West Virginia

Cornish

Cosner

Dr. Suds Capon Bridge

Germaid Red

Gallo Plum

Giant Syrian

Golden Ponderosa

Hillbilly

Homer Fike's Yellow Oxheart

Irish Pink

Kellogg’s Breakfast (there is some dissent on whether this is actually a WV Heirloom, but we’ll claim it as one of our own).

Mortgage Lifter

Mountaineer Mystery

Mountain Princess

Old German

Paw Paw

Striped German

Tappy’s Finest

Toensfeldt

Transparent

Watermelon Pink

West Virginia

West Virginia 63

West Virginia Centennial

West Virginia Penitentiary

West Virginia Straw

West Virginia Yellow

Yellow Cookie

So which West Virginia Heirloom varieties would you like to try this year? Have you tried any of them in the past? What were your experiences with them?

I'd better end this post quickly, suddlenly i'm feeling the need for a great big "mooshy 'mater" sandwich fresh from granddad's front porch.

Of Snakes and Sang

Every year about the middle of August, we'd make a trip up on the mountain to dig ginseng or "sang" as we called it. Sanging was a way for us to get some extra money to buy school clothes. When we lived on the farm we’d go on the mountain there to search, and sometimes we’d find huge sang roots with many fine hair roots on them. It was these big roots that brought in the money when you sold them. On our sanging outings, we’d make a day of it, and we’d usually pack a lunch to take with us when we headed up on the mountain.

Wild Ginseng, or Sang as we called it.

After digging the Sang, we were always careful to plant the ripe berries back in the same soil that we dug the ginseng from, that way, there’d me more sang that’d grow there in the future. After we’d dig the sang, we’d dry it by hanging it up in the kitchen pantry and after a few weeks, it'd be dry so we’d take it to sell to Paul Champ down at Petersburg. It usually brought about $200 a pound, but it took a lot of dried sang to make a pound.

While on our sang trips, mom would always take a sack of onions with us, in case one of us would get snake bit. She said that a cut onion placed on a snakebite would draw out the poison and would give us enough time to get to the hospital. Nobody ever got snake bit on our trips, but God knows there where plenty of timber rattlers in the rocks where we dug the sang. Seldom was the time when granddad wouldn’t kill at least one rattler when we were out.


A Timber Rattler

This reminds me of how one time we took a man named Akie to look for rattlesnakes. Akie was a neighbor of my Aunt Pat & a friend of my granddads. Akie caught Timber Rattlers for a living and sold them to the Washington Zoo. They’d give him $100 for each Timber Rattler he could catch for them. Akie had been bitten by rattlesnakes so many times in his life that he was apparently immune to their venom, so he had no fear of them. When Akie would spot a rattler, he'd chase it down and pick it up with his bare hands. He didn't care if it bit him or not, he said that getting snakebit to him felt just like a chicken pecking you on the hand. He'd proudly show you all of the snakebites that he had on his hands and arms, which were numerous. I remember we took him to a giant rockslide right under the North Mountain rocks near where we sanged, and he caught 15 rattlers in one afternoon including one gigantic yellow rattler. These rattlers were huge too, some were bigger around than his arm and were well over 10 feet long. Akie put each snake in an old feedsack and carried them on his back down to where the truck was parked, he put the sack in a big wooden box that he used to transport the rattlesnakes. Nobody had to tell us kids to stay away from the snakes either, like most kids raised in the country, we gave snakes and skunks a wide berth.

Akie couldn't drive so my granddad took him home, and of course, I had to tag along since we were passing a store in Circleville (and I never passed up a chance to go to the store). When we got to Akie’s house, he took us to see his snakes, he had huge homemade cages all over his back yard which butted up against a cliff of rocks. The air stunk so of snakes it nearly made me and my granddad sick. Akie told us he had several hundred snakes there and that the zoo people were supposed to be coming soon to buy them off of him. Later, we heard that Akie got enough money from selling the snakes that he bought himself a trailer and a piece of land down off the mountain, where he continues to live to this day. I remember the law put a stop to Akie’s business a few years later when they informed Akie that it was against the law to capture and sell timber rattlers. Akie still catches snakes for local people for belts and such, but nothing like he used to in years past.

Summertime Swimming Hole

Summertime has always been a magical time for me, and has always been my favorite season. I like the heat and everything about the season. As the old song says “Summertime and the livin’ is easy.”

My reasons for loving summer are many, but all of them have roots in my childhood. I remember on the last day of school, it was always tradition in my family to go swimming in the river. In my earlier childhood, the whole gang of us loaded into the back of granddads truck and went to the swimming hole behind Teddy Bland’s place below Riverton.

After what seemed like an eternity where granddad stopped and talked to Teddy and let him know that we’d be down at the river, we finally made our way past Teddy's turkey houses, through the hayfields and on back to the river. I remember my granddad would always sing a little ditty that went "I'm goin' swimmin' with bow-legged women" to annoy us, but mostly we ignored his singing because we were so excited to get to the swimming hole.



Mind you this was in early June in the Potomac Highlands and the water wasn't exactly warm, although it certainly didn't matter to us, we'd have gone swimming even if ice chunks had been floating down the river. I remember my aunts and my brother would always ease into the water amid loud exclamations of "ooosh, that's cold", while me and a few of the others would just run right into the river and hit it all at once. Eventually we'd all be in the water and having a great time.

We had games that we’d invented for when we were swimming, like the old “warsh machine” as we called it, to do this you’d get in water about up to your chest and by linking your hands together and making a quick side by side motion, a great foam arose from the water, to us it looked exactly like the water in the old tub of the wringer washer that mom used.

Inevitably, someone would bring soap and shampoo and the older kids would wash their hair and wash up in the river, we didn’t have running water at home (unless you count running to the spring to get it) so it was easier to do this than to haul water up the hill from the spring to wash in. I remember for as far as you could see down the river, there’d be a long trail of soapsuds floating on top of the water.

As we’d eventually wear ourselves out from all the swimming, we’d get out of the water and dry off with towels we had brought with us, some of the girls would lay out on the rocks the dry off in the sun. We’d usually change into dry clothes, that way we could hold up the wet clothes from the truck bed or hang them out of the car window, and let the wind dry them on the way home.

I’m sure we looked like a bunch of gypsies with our wet clothes flapping in the breeze but we didn’t care, we had the whole summer ahead of us.