A tomato variety that means a lot to us

Even though they may look similar there are no two identical tomatoes in size, shape, color and flavor even from the same variety and same plant.

Each variety of tomato has a unique history of how it came to be and for us the Copia tomato has a very special and cherished story for us.

It started back in 2004 when we went with our dad to the Copia Institute where the Culinary Institute had gardens there and we got a tour of it.

We sampled a wide variety of different tomato varieties and we agreed that the Copia was the best one there. Our dad got some seed from them and then planted it on our family’s farm.

Every year he would select the best plants and save the seed for them to improve the variety as it adjusted to the local environment.

When we started our farm we got some of his Copia seed from 2008 and planted it hoping to keep alive the selection of this variety that is special to us.

Now in our fourth year of growing it and saving the seed it is adapting to our farm and there is a little more consistency in the. size and shape of the tomatoes it produces.

With the cooler summer we have so far we have only started harvesting a handful of Copia in the last week as the plants are filled with green tomatoes.

It is a gorgeous large tomato with red-ish orange stripes all over it. The flavor is very sweet and it a great slicing tomato or to be added to salads.

Copia was our last tomato variety to come in this year and our last variety of peppers we have started to harvest are the yellow corno di toro.

The variety is called Escamillo and it is a frying pepper shaped like a Bull’s Horn that is filled with sweetness to complement the beautiful golden color of it.

It is named for a bullfighter in a French opera that its red counterpart Carmen gets its name from.

Now that we are harvesting all the varieties of peppers we grow they can all be chopped up and fried up or if you want to taste the unique flavor of a specific variety they can be cooked separately.