It all combines to make entertaining light fare. Other aspects of the author's cultivation surface in references to diverse literary sources from Cheever to Crèvecoeur.

Readers get an introduction to regular farmer's market customers and sellers and a field guide to the practices of Stark's affable Amish and Mennonite neighbors.

The author also delights the palates of sophisticated foodies via the kitchens of the great chefs at Gotham's priciest eateries.

Stark's Eckerton Hill Farm provides fruits and vegetables for a discerning retail clientele at New York's Union Square Greenmarket. ' -John Grogan, author of Marley & Me, 'Lovingly crafted memoir about the author's days producing organic veggies on his small farm in Pennsylvania Dutch country. is an instant classic of gentleman farmer literature.' -Carly Berwick, 'Tim Stark is a natural-born storyteller-funny, poignant, and unerringly authentic. 'With succulent wit, conveys the poetry of a well-grown tomato.' - Entertainment Weekly ' Heirloom. Tim's tomatoes are featured on the menus of New York City's most demanding chefs and have even made the cover of Gourmet magazine. Today, Eckerton Hill Farm does a booming trade in heirloom tomatoes and obscure chile peppers. When favorable weather brought in a bumper crop, Tim hauled his unusual tomatoes to New York City's Union Square Greenmarket, at a time when the tomato was unanimously red. His crop soon outgrew the brownstone in which it had sprouted, forcing him to cart the seedlings to his family's farm in Pennsylvania, where they were transplanted into the ground by hand. One evening, chancing upon a Dumpster full of discarded lumber, he carried the lumber home and built a germination rack for thousands of heirloom tomato seedlings. Fourteen years ago, Tim Stark was living in Brooklyn, working days as a management consultant, and writing unpublished short stories by night. Situated beautifully at the intersection of Michael Pollan, Ruth Reichl, and Barbara Kingsolver, Heirloom is an inspiring, elegiac, and gorgeously written memoir about rediscovering an older and still vital way of life.

Heirloom by Tim Stark