Dr. Tomato featured in New Hampshire Magazine

A profile of Dr. Tomato and Healthy Home Harvest appears in in this month’s issue of New Hampshire Magazine: 

Dr. Tomato wants you to grow a garden. The reasons are deeply seeded in his social conscious and eating fresh, healthy food is just the start.

 

David O’Connor, aka Dr. Tomato, came of age in the late sixties and is still singing the praises of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Where most hipsters, counter-culture types and readers of Mother Earth News have long since succumbed to the siren call of big box homes with picket fences, O’Connor has stuck to his guns.

 

Not that the medieval castle keep he and his partner Loretta Salazar built in Barrington is fortified, but it has all the other bells that would make a 10th-century lord and lady comfortable, except, of course, for the serfs. For O’Connor, his lifestyle and his castle are part and parcel of his basic philosophy of life — tread lightly upon the earth — and at every turn possible be self-sufficient. And he walks the talk. The castle was built with no outside help, is kept warm by super insulation, solar panels and wood stoves, and is surrounded with lush gardens.

 

Gardening has been a lifelong passion for the couple. They want other people to know the joys of working the soil and enjoying the fruits of their labor. Just as important for them, small gardens could be a step to solving the pickle of food, social and environmental concerns.

 

“Forty-two percent of homes had victory gardens during WWII,” says Salazar. O’Connor adds, “Personal gardens and community gardens are the only way for a community to be self-sufficient. Food from all the town’s farmers markets would not feed everyone in the region.” Is it time to localize our food supply?

 

The Eat Local movement had its roots in the early ’70s but the groundswell of information and interest is just peaking. The time is ripe and the concerns are in the news everyday — will careless mismanagement of our environment lead to our doom? O’Connor is making one small step for mankind and asking you along on the journey.

 

O’Connor and James Cavarretta started Healthy Home Harvest LLC in Northwood almost two years ago for a multitude of reasons. Foremost, they wanted to prove they could extend the growing season without energy from the grid. And more importantly, offer the know-how and supplies to individuals for growing their own produce…

Find out more about Dr. Tomato, Solorganics, the Mother Ship and MycoAngelo Mushrooms, along with Dr. Tomato’s tips on container gardening in the July issue of New Hampshire Magazine >

Healthy Home Harvest and their many wares can also be found Thursdays at the Northwood Farmers’ Market, and Saturdays at the Newmarket and Wentworth Greenhouse Farmers’ Markets.

This entry was posted on July 10, 2010 at 9:49 am and is filed under author: Debra, eating locally in the media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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