Video
A Day at the Green Market with Tim Stark
A celebrity heirloom tomato farmer shows off his stand at a New York City farmers’ market, offering a window into the trials—and thrills—of being a small-scale farmer.
Produced by Alexa Schirtzinger

On a clear Wednesday morning in early October 2008, when New York first felt the nip of winter at its heels, I had the opportunity to interview Tim Stark, who in the past 14 years has become New York City’s premier—and perhaps even its first—celebrity heirloom tomato farmer.

But that’s not how Stark would put it. In person, he’s modest and funny, attributing celebrity to his crops rather than to himself. A self-proclaimed “tomato person,” Stark is one of those who can lose himself in the endless variety of tastes and textures in carefully bred heirlooms.

In this video, Stark takes us through his farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket in downtown New York City, showcasing the bounty of the eastern Pennsylvania land he once grew up on and now farms. Though he says interest in eating locally has grown astronomically since the time he started farming, Stark worries about the future of small farmers like him. With an economic recession, climate change, and development creeping into rural areas, the local farmer could be the first casualty.

Despite those worries, as any farmer can attest, there’s something incomparable about dark, fertile earth and the tender, silver-haired plants growing from it. Though Stark says he feels like he’s fighting an uphill battle, that feeling is somehow detached from his desire to keep cultivating the earth—and maybe to buy his own farmland someday soon. Farming, he says philosophically, “is my burden. But it keeps me in touch with the rest of the world.”

Click on the image below to view the video.

Back to Top

Back to Web Exclusives