Tomato Bliss leads family farms in the fight against Big Tomato
Tomato Bliss aims to revolutionize the tomato industry by working with independent farmers committed to reviving the planet one acre at a time.
“And Galien is leading the way,” says the company’s founder, Marie Krane, with an optimism about the abandoned town’s mighty potential.
Indeed, this hamlet on the Indiana- Michigan state line seems an unlikely headquarters in the mission to overtake an industry that produces 90% of all tomatoes sold, relying on a mere 25 varieties. Or at least one would think until meeting Krane, who with her husband, Robert Bergman, owns Lotus Flower Farm, where they grow hundreds of varieties of heirloom tomatoes using state-of-the-art, holistic growing practices. It’s also where Krane develops her Tomato Bliss products, now featured at Food52 with its millions of followers.
More than two decades ago, Krane came up with a flavorful recipe for “tomato bliss” with surprisingly few ingredients. The vibrantly colored and sun-ripened heirlooms—she uses over 30 varieties—with their historic pedigree and wonderful names, such as Jaune Flamme, Aunt Ginny’s Purple, German Pink and Green Zebra, give Tomato Bliss products a rich, addictive taste.
Krane graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago with a Master of Fine Arts and founded Cream Co., an installation and performance collective that she is still involved with. One of their art projects, exchanging heirloom tomato seedlings for poems, was a harbinger of the current venture. Cream Co. went from sharing 500 plants in 2010 to sharing 5,000 plants in 2014. Soon they were not only producing seedlings but also growing tomatoes.
“We were growing them in buckets on rooftops and concrete sidewalks,” she says.
Krane wondered why she couldn’t find fresh heirloom tomatoes in Chicago grocery stores or any heirlooms in canned tomato products. Don’t mention to her those hard globes labeled “heirloom” in plastic containers in the produce department. They’re grown the same way as much other store produce, in hydroponic liquid.
“They were so easy to grow, I thought, ‘How hard can it be to farm them?’” she says, about their decision to buy a farm.
They soon found out. There is a big difference between growing tomatoes in buckets with fresh soil and growing tomatoes in degenerated dirt on what was a conventionally managed farm.
Though the farm looked beautiful in October with the leaves changing colors, in March it was apparent that the land was “all but dead,” barely capable of growing a few weeds. To plant that year, Krane and Bergman had to drill holes in the dirt. Their heirloom output was less than ideal.
Krane researched crop diversity and the importance of permaculture and replenishing the soil. She started working with Michigan State University’s Southwest Michigan Research and Extension Center in Benton Harbor, which connected the couple with the Niles Entrepreneurial & Culinary Incubator (NECI). This group helped them launch Tomato Bliss and its products, including Roasted Tomato Salsa Verde, Clarified Tomato Broth and Roasted Heirloom Tomato Soup.
On board with the couple was Sasha Earle, an artist from Cream Co. who is a founding member of Tomato Bliss and the company’s chief administrative officer.
Taking down Big Tomato also requires collaboration with like-minded farmers.
“We regeneratively grow heirloom tomatoes at Lotus Flower Farm and we source heirloom tomatoes from independent farmers in Southwest Michigan, including Kalerville Farm, Ten Hens Farm and Renegade Acres, among others,” says Krane.
Now, even in winter and early spring, the farm is alive and beautiful. Krane grows what she calls “gorilla plants,” which last through many seasons, attract bees and birds for regenerating crops, flowers and fruit trees, and are easy to care for.
The latter is important because it makes farming easier. “The soil does the work,” she says. “We don’t have to use drills to plant our tomatoes any more.”
Tomato Bliss products are available online at tomatobliss.com and through Amazon, Food52.com, marketwagon.com, as well as Green City Market in Chicago and Falatic’s Meat Market in Sawyer, MI.
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