Moscow Food Co-op Producer Profile

by Georgia Young, from the October 2002 newsletter

For anyone who has ever attempted to grow tomatoes, which require a finicky schedule of sun, warmth, and water, you know that getting tomatoes to turn red is no small feat. As one of the major suppliers of the Co-op's local, organically grown tomatoes, delivering 280 lbs. of tomatoes each week during the summer, Dale Weissenfels is somewhat of a "tomatoist."

I was late meeting Dale Weissenfels twice. Surprised that he was even putting up with my utter lack of organization, I ended up having a memorable hour wandering around the tomato patch in his backyard, smelling the unmistakable green, ripe odor of hundreds of tomato plants, and petting his old dog, Sparky. Dale is a friendly guy, and he readily talked about his journey into the world of organic tomatoes. Having lived most of my life in Seattle and Portland, where the organic food community is fairly vibrant but also alarmingly composed of upper middle-class professional folks with very little connection to the soil, it was refreshing to talk to someone who came to organic farming via a totally different route.

Dale grew up not too far from Clarkston, on a cattle and alfalfa ranch. He has lived in the Clarkston area all his life. For 30 years, he worked in a mill where he produced plywood, a job he says was fairly thankless. As a hobby, he started growing tomatoes in his backyard and selling them on street corners. The Co-op started buying his tomatoes in 1994, and he found doing business with them to be very pleasant, as they always provided him with a contractual, long-term market and didn't turn to large growers mid-season. When the Co-op started making the big push toward organic produce, they convinced Dale to start growing tomatoes organically. He fundamentally agrees with organic agriculture, as he doesn't like to consume pesticides and believes in small, local farms with high-quality produce. Last spring he took an early retirement and now works on his tomatoes full-time. As he put it "you never make much money doing anything so you might as well do something you like!"

Growing organic has been a process of trial and error for Dale, as there aren't many organic farmers in the Clarkston area. Every January he plants around 300 seedlings in his house. In February he moves them out into the greenhouse, which is temperature controlled and allows for unusually early ripening even as temperatures remain sporadic. He gets tomatoes as early as Memorial Day, and the harvest typically continues through early September. He uses no pesticides, instead experimenting with natural sprays and fertilizers. The insects, surprisingly, pretty much stay away from healthy tomato plants, though weeds can be a problem and he pulls them out as he wanders the rows.

This year Dale's harvest has been cut almost in half by a mysterious "tomato blight," which has affected many conventional growers in the area as well. He is hoping to keep his soil clean next year and not spread the blight. I hope it works out because I can't wait to eat his tomatoes next May. As he points out, customers are usually a bit cowed by the price of organic tomatoes, but once they taste them they come back and fill bags. His tomatoes look like tomatoes should: firm, deep red, and fresh smelling. Dale definitely gives local, organic farming a good name.

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