Maine winter treat is red, ripe, ready

MADISON, Maine -- On the snow-covered pastures outside Backyard Farm's 25-acre greenhouse , it's cold and sunny. But under the glass-covered greenhouse, it's a humid 70 degrees. Workers in T-shirts and sunglasses dart here and there harvesting ripe, red, and perfectly round tomatoes, still on the vine, from row after row of lush green foliage.

In this paper mill town northwest of Waterville, the new greenhouse venture boasts 240,000 shaggy tomato vines drooping with fruit. Since January, the farm has been shipping all of the red orbs, called Backyard Beauties, to New England markets. They're picked ripe one day and are on your table the next. In the middle of summer, this isn't a startling occurrence. But in the dreary north, long before the growing season begins, it is revolutionary.

Most vine-ripened hydroponic greenhouse tomatoes are harvested as soon as they start to blush. The fruit will turn red and look ripe in a few days, but since starches don't convert to sugars after the fruit has left the vine, there will be no sweet tomato flavor. The bulk of hydroponic tomatoes sold in our markets are grown in Holland, Israel, Mexico, and Canada. Backyard founder and CEO Paul Sellew says that his idea is to grow the food where people eat it. "In New England, each person eats an average of 20 pounds of fresh tomatoes per year," he says. "That's about a 300 million pound a year market -- and only a tiny percentage is supplied locally."

Sellew was drawn to Madison by "cheap electricity, cheap land, high unemployment, and a culture of good work ethic." A towering 6-feet-8, and a former professional basketball player in Argentina, Belgium, and Italy, Sellew is part of a Connecticut family that ran an ornamental plant nursery. He graduated from Cornell University School of Agriculture and Life Sciences and ran Finger Lakes Aquaculture, and Earthgro, a composting company. In 2005 he teamed up with Wayne Davis, a lawyer and general adviser, and grower Arie Vandergiessen, a ruddy-faced master grower from southwestern Holland. Sellew says that the Dutch don't just have green thumbs but green fingers as well.

The greenhouse is in production year round seven days a week. Sellew leads me on a walk through an aisle of endless tomatoes. Halfway down he hands me a new trial variety to taste. "This one is called Internal Red," he says. "It has triple the lycopene, and is more red all the way through than any other tomato." Just past the Internal Reds are some very flavorful varieties that the workers call "Arie's secret stash." We stand among the vines and eat mini Roma tomatoes that taste like sweet peaches.

Over the next few years, the greenhouses will expand their offerings to include grape, cherry, cocktail, and beefsteak tomatoes. They also want to grow cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, and culinary herbs. "Heck, I even want to grow heirlooms for the high-end market," says Sellew.

The growing operation, which employs 90, is impossibly precise. Each plant produces a cluster of fruit every week. Rainwater runs off the roof, gathers in a four-acre, 14-foot deep pond, and provides irrigation for the whole greenhouse. Sellew calls this drip system "fertigation." Bees take care of the pollination and everything is kept healthy with biological controls like parasitic wasps and ladybugs, rather than pesticides and fungicides. Vandergiessen says that maintaining the balance requires constant vigilance -- "never ending," he says.

There are actually advantages to growing in a northern climate, say the entrepreneurs. "It's much easier to heat a greenhouse than to cool a greenhouse," says Sellew. To deal with the lack of sunlight in winter, they use 12,000 1,000-watt grow lights. In the winter they're on 17 hours a day. At night blankets are rolled down under the glass to hold the heat in and to keep the rural spot from looking like a lit- up airport.

At this point, the greenhouse is heated with propane, but Sellew will transition to native wood chips over the next couple of years. "Sustainability is important to me," he says. "The paper and pulp industries are going south but we still have millions of acres of trees. It would be nice to use renewable energy. "

Both Sellew and Vandergiessen are passionate about their fruit. In the greenhouse, Sellew slices a tomato, drizzles it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and digs in. Vandergiessen likes to make salty or sweet tomato juice with his fruits, but says that his favorite way to eat a tomato is right off the vine.

"I pick it and bite into it like an apple," he says.

Backyard Beauties are available at Hannaford Supermarkets., Whole Foods Markets, Stop & Shop Supermarkets, and Wilson Farms, 10 Pleasant St., Lexington, 781-862-3900.