TRADITOM goes organic III
Local growers Cesar Baltasar and Javier Ciscar are crazy about their rich traditional Valencian crop heritage. A couple of years ago, they started to grow different Valencian varieties of vegetables including the tomato “cuarenteno”, pepper tomato, stripped eggplants, snake-melons, pumpkins, red kidney beans, etc. About the same time they became aware of the TRADITOM project and have added to the list of TRADITOM collaborators ever since. This season they started to grow a selection of TRADITOM varieties under organic conditions and the plants and fruit just look gorgeous!
Cesar and Javier’s field is right next to a road that many locals use to go back and forth from the municipalities Benifaió to Almussafes. It is also very close to the neighbour town of Alginet that was the main Continental Spanish producer and exporter for fresh tomato in the 1960’s with the tomato variety “cuarenteno” on the top of the list. This variety was adequate for this area with mild climate to come early in the season with the help of good traditional horticultural practices.
Cesar and Javier have also introduced the concept “buy on the spot” to sell their veggies, so that any Saturday or Sunday you can shop for good, tasty, freshly-picked TRADITOM tomatoes by just dropping by. “Everyone tasting these tomatoes just loves them” says Cesar, “just in a salad with olive oil and some salt or in a sauce their flavor is great” confirms Javier. Maybe it is going to take some time for people in the area to get used to this new business model of buying and tasting directly from the field, but the growers believe they are on a good track and definitely apply the “farm to fork” concept at its best.