SOAP LAKE, Wash. - Death focuses the mind, or rather, the specter of death, and when its shadow touched Martin Ringhofer's life and left him in the hospital for three weeks and away from work for five months, he questioned what he would be leaving behind.
Certainly, his two children rank first, but after that? Ringhofer's life had been spent at Boeing, procuring the hundreds of thousands of parts that make an airplane, while ensuring the supply chain runs as efficiently as possible. It's important stuff, but it's not the stuff people are remembered for. Enter the heirloom tomato.
Once known as love apples, tomatoes have a long and varied history. They originated in South America and spread to the rest of the world through trade routes. Today, most tomatoes are hybridized versions of the original and almost always red. The heirloom is not hyperdized and comes in every color of the rainbow. Ringhofer calls them the tomatoes mothers used to grow.
"I was looking in terms of what can I do if I have three to four years left to make a difference," Ringhofer said.
If the heirloom idea catches on as it has elsewhere, the tomatoes could become a small profit center for backyard and larger farmers in Soap Lake and its environs. The idea could also make the area a mecca for chefs throughout the region.
Ringhofer lives in Seattle, but he and his wife, Jennifer, also own a small cottage his father built in Soap Lake. Much of Ringhofer's recuperation took place here, where you can glimpse the lake in the distance. It is also here where events--and Ringhofer's process oriented mind--help to unfold the idea of the community hosting an heirloom tomato festival the likes of which would not only enrich the economy directly, but help return the community to its roots as a tourist destination.
Ringhofer started growing heirloom tomatoes five years ago, shortly after his brush with death. He sent away for his first seeds and planted a few of them in February in a shed outside his home in Seattle. Around the end of April, he brought the foot tall size plants to Soap Lake and planted them in his fully fenced backyard oasis.
It didn't take more than a $7 pick-up load of chicken manure, an irrigation timer and the hot Soap Lake Sun to set the heirlooms to climbing and Ringhofer to thinking.
Soap Lake is 25 miles north of Moses Lake, Wash along Highway 17. The land here lacks the irrigated vitality of the Columbia Basin further south. There is a lot of sagebrush.
In the midst of this baroness, comes a tourist town that has fallen on hard times. Once, crowds visited the city for the purpose of swimming in the lake which was said to possess health benefits. Now, Soap Lake is a community clinging to the edge of a lake, waiting to be re-discovered. Ringhofer thinks a heirloom tomato festival might be the thing that does it.
To further that goal, Ringhofer offered 900 free diverse heirloom tomato plants to gardeners in and around Soap Lake. His experience is that with proper fertilizer and water in the hot, arid environment around the lake, 36 plants can produce about 1,200 pounds of tomatoes. He knows this, because as a man who has learned to think in terms of organizing a process, he weighs his production.
"We wanted to know how fast the plants would grow and how much product you can get," he said. " Ringhofer is unusual for more than his parts and material orientation. He came to America from Austria via eight years living with his family as refugees in Argentina, waiting for permission to enter the U.S. As an immigrant himself, his experience cuts across the immigration debate like a knife.
"What is going on in this country is horrible. Hispanics are like people who left the Soviet Union. They're like the Cubans. They want a life and we are a nation of of immigrants. We ought to treat them as we treat the Cubans. As refugees," he said.
Ringhofer, who was brought up with the family value "that you get more out of giving, than taking," gave away his 900 tomato plants one spring weekend. Thirty-five gardeners signed up to grow the plants in their garden with one stipulation. For one week, all the tomatoes the plants produce will go to stock an afternoon TomatoFare hosted by the Center for American Food and Wine at SageCliffe, a location perched on the scenic Columbia River Gorge.
Ringhofer held the first Soap Lake tomato fare last year--in his backyard. He knew the idea had legs when hundreds of people showed up with very little advertising. This year there's an admission charge of $35, but that will include wine and presentations from many of the region's finest chefs using, what else: heirloom tomatoes.
Ringhofer can't believe how easily everything has fallen into place. It's not exactly spooky, but there are a series of coincidences that makes you think things are happening for a reason. And maybe they are. When it comes to a legacy, those tomatoes aren't bad.
Scott Yates is based in Spokane.
His e-mail address is syates@capitalpress.com.
