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Posted on 08/22/2007 4:12:01 PM PDT by SJackson

ANGELO — Tomatoes crowded a table in a garage at Old Webster Farm. In striped, mottled and solid shades of red, orange, yellow, green, purple and brown, the fruit looks like a dish of candy, said farmer Pat Yourell. Hundreds of pounds of more than 80 varieties of tomatoes are ripening at Mr. Yourell's farm near Sparta. It's his third season as a vegetable farmer.

'It gets better every year,' he said. Mr. Yourell raises 1 ½ acres of vegetables. With tomatoes his signature crop, he also grows onions, garlic, basil, lettuce, rhubarb, baby fennel and baby leeks. The farm was certified organic this summer, and Mr. Yourell grows mostly heirloom varieties.

'Everything I grow here is open-pollinated,' he said. During his first two seasons, Mr. Yourell sold produce at farmers markets with mixed results. Sales were fickle, with a lot of rotten vegetables tossed out, he said.

He now sells to restaurants and food cooperatives. His customers include Signatures Restaurant and Bluff Country Co-op in Winona, Minn., and several Madison restaurants.

'If you can impress a chef, you're doing something right,' Mr. Yourell said. 'They're the ultimate foodies.' Larry Wolner, owner of Blue Heron Coffeehouse in Winona, has bought vegetables from Mr. Yourell for the past couple of years. The menu includes an heirloom-tomato salad and pesto made from Mr. Yourell's basil. 'He's very knowledgeable and what he's doing … that's a big difference,' Mr. Wolner said. 'He's obviously not in it just for the money.'

Mr. Yourell expects to pick 200 pounds of heirloom tomatoes and 50 pounds of paste tomatoes each week until late September.

He saves vegetable seeds for his own use and to sell to Fedco Seeds of Maine.

Mr. Yourell favors mulching to keep moisture in and weeds out. However, he missed a few crops this year. 'It's going to be a fun search and rescue operation to go in there and get the winter squash,' he said, pointing to a weedy field.

Mr. Yourell spent his youth at Old Webster Farm. It's been in his family for 60 years. His grandmother, who will be 87 next month, still lives in the farmhouse. Mr. Yourell, his wife, who's a nurse, and their three children live in Sparta.

Mr. Yourell was an advertising copywriter in Milwaukee for several years until he was laid off. He started working more and more hours at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy, where the family owned a share in a community-supported agriculture operation.

'We decided we're going to start a farm,' he said of the move to western Wisconsin.

Mr. Yourell said he started the farm wanting 'to grow things,' but completing the organic-certification process and the Land Stewardship Project's Farm Beginnings program taught him to keep records and make plans.

He wants to add 1 to 1 ½ more acres of vegetables next year. He plans to build a hoop house this fall to extend his tomato crop. He's also in need of a shed because the farm's barn fell down years ago.

Mr. Yourell works mostly alone, with some help from his father and 5-year-old daughter.

The venture isn't free of doubt. Mr. Yourell admitted an annual once-a-season wish to return to his former life. Still, he relishes returning to the family farm, a source of many happy memories.

'Every day something will happen to take me back to being 5 years old,' he said.

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