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Monday, Aug. 31, 2009

Backyard business earns income for Macon resident

Money has never grown on trees, but these days it’s such a sparse crop that many people are beginning to look at vegetable gardens as money in the bank.

John Bodo, for one, figures the Mortgage Lifter may be ready for a comeback.

He eyed a prize specimen of this creatively named tomato one day last week, hefting the pink variety as big as a linebacker’s fist.

“This is going to be my queen,” he said.

The variety originally was developed by a West Virginia farmer during the Great Depression, and its success saved his home from foreclosure.

Bodo, a West Virginia native himself, moved to Macon five years ago to teach at Central High School after years as a teacher and superintendent. But a craving for homegrown produce led him to rapidly turn his suburban backyard into a farming business on the side.

“I never found tomatoes in Macon that didn’t taste like cardboard, even from roadside stands,” he said.

Bodo specializes in heirloom varieties such as the Mortgage Lifter and his favorite, Brandywine. Heirloom vegetables are traditional varieties that are rarely grown since hybrids were developed to better tolerate disease and insects.

“But if you buy the resistant strains, they don’t have any flavor,” Bodo said.

Bodo uses mostly organic treatments, such as bacteria that attack tomato hornworms, to keep pests and disease in check.

This year his 400 tomato plants and 150 pepper plants were hit by virus and blight, but he and his wife, Linda, still harvest at least five pounds of tomatoes each day. Last summer he grew enough to supply several local restaurants. His reputation has spread by word of mouth. Atlanta restaurants have called, and total strangers stop at his door.

“When we found Mr. Bodo, it was a blessing,” said Christian Losito, chef and owner of The Back Burner Restaurant. Bodo was a restaurant patron who brought in some of his tomatoes to show Losito. The Back Burner soon requested all the peppers he could grow, too.

“It’s a very superior product, tasty and free of all pesticides,” said Losito, who also buys lettuce organically grown in Dublin. “Most tomatoes from the wholesaler come from California. They have to be picked green and never have that full sweetness.”

Backburner serves an appetizer starring tomatoes and basil, and customers began to rave about the tomatoes after Bodo started providing them, Losito said.

He said many of his patrons ask about how the vegetables are grown, and there is a demand for food people can be confident is healthy.

“I don’t understand why there’s not more people doing this in Georgia, when there is such a long growing season here and so much moisture,” Losito said.

Losito added that Bodo’s price — about $4 a pound for heirloom tomatoes, Bodo says — is less than a wholesaler’s anyway. Bodo, who is 62, figures he might be able to make $5,000 to $8,000 a summer on his backyard in The Highlands subdivision after he retires. He has named his new business “Godiva Tomatoes and Peppers.”

The local food movement has received plenty of press in recent years with the release of best-selling books such as “The 100 Mile Diet” and “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.” Proponents say the food tastes better, is better for the environment because it requires less fuel for transport, and supports the local economy. Even President Obama has a vegetable garden at the White House, and his chef specializes in local food.

Bodo’s interest in local food grows from a heritage that extends far away. His parents were Hungarian immigrants who came to the United States through Ellis Island. His mother maintained a vegetable garden to supply her traditional Hungarian dishes, while his father mined coal.

Bodo’s favorite meal to cook from his fresh tomatoes and peppers is still Hungarian pepper steak. He grows Hungarian wax peppers and Hungarian sweet round peppers. That squat, almost pumpkin-shaped variety is used to make the pimentos in pimento cheese.

For the most part, local garden and seed stores don’t sell heirloom varieties, so Bodo orders seeds and starts growing them in his home’s sunroom in January.

“They’re like infant babies,” he said. “You have to coddle them.”

They move from tiny cups under fluorescent lamps to his 6-by-8-foot greenhouse, which Bodo assembled from a kit. They stay there 60 to 80 days until their stalks are about as big around as a pencil and the weather is warmer, when they can be moved into the backyard garden.

Well, the garden is the backyard, really. Its 2,000 square feet are dominated by 8-foot-tall tomato plants tied to clotheslines at the top of stakes. “Scary eyes,” big brightly colored balls with an eye pattern, float at the perimeter of the garden to frighten greedy birds.

Bodo sold few vegetables this summer because the tomato wilt hit so many of his plants, but he had more than enough to give away. Walk down a hallway decorated with pictures of a youthful Bodo as an Alaskan firefighter and an April Fool’s Elvis impersonator, and you reach a kitchen with counters half-covered in tomatoes.

Bowls of confetti-colored peppers decorate the rooms.

Eventually, some will be dried to make homemade red pepper flakes. He and his wife experimented with making salsa this summer to give as gifts.

“Gardening is therapeutic,” Bodo said. “This year, I’ve mostly given the tomatoes away.”

To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.