Since it's squareville around here today anyways, I'm going to head to B-town in a little bit. My main reasoning for sticking around as long as I did was the St. Paul Farmers' Market.

I've been buying a lot of tomatoes recently; apparently they're notorious for their ability to outpace the needs of the grower, but as a pasta and BLT lover I'm pretty sure I can cope.

So far I've bought myself an Old German, a Roma, and an Early Girl. I was extremely tempted to get a Tumbling Tom (a hanging basket tomato!) but I'm not sure that I'd ever have anywhere to put it. And I would have bought a Super Fantastic, but they were sold out — the guy said this variety is really popular.

The heirloom varieties fascinate me, appealing as they do to the obsessively-collecting geek in me. If they sold tomato trading cards at the Farmers' Market, god help me I would probably buy them.

(C.f. microbrewed beer.)

There were two places in particular to get heirlooms today: there was a large selection of young heirlooms at a booth in the north-center of the market, and near the southwest corner there was a good variety of larger plants, including heirlooms. Valencia and Old German were at a bunch of booths.

Heirloom varieties I spotted today:

Amish Paste
Black Krim
Boxcar Willie (the official tomato of hobos everywhere)
Brandywine Red
Cherokee Purple
Hawaiian Pineapple
Mr. Stripey
Old German
Pop-In (I think? These are apparently "extremely rare")
Rose
Sweet Millions
Taxi
Valencia
Yellow Pear