Cheryl’s tomato love

At the end of a long gravel driveway off Coolart Road in Tyabb lies a small yet extraordinary tomato farm.

Surrounded by regenerated native forest and encircled by a barrier of flowering plants, it is tranquil but brimming with life. From the wetlands comes the croaking of frogs, and the air is filled with birdsong. Here, Cheryl McGaffin cultivates over 220 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, some natural crossbreeds that evolved on her 7-hectare property.

It’s called Daniel’s Run Farm and was purchased in 1995 as a block with a little remnant bushland overgrown with blackberries. Almost 30 years later, over 160,000 native trees, shrubs, grasses, and climbers have been planted. A wetland was created on an ephemeral creek line, which, by good fortune, now runs year-round.

That revegetated bush not only protects Cheryl’s potager-style garden from wind but is also habitat for birds that form part of the farm’s integrated pest management. Small wagtails and wrens flit out of the trees and into the tomato patch, feasting on harmful pest insects, ably assisted by a family of hungry welcome swallows. This aerial defense is complemented on the ground by the ‘ring of steel’—small hedges of colorful zinnias, borage, marigolds, marjoram, and flowering buckwheat that encircle each tomato bed. These vibrant plants not only attract pollinators but also provide habitat for predatory insects such as ladybirds.

Cheryl learned her love of growing from her grandparents who had a dairy on the Port Phillip side of the Peninsula around Rye. “He had a great love of tomatoes and grew them with passion. I think I inherited that from him,” says Cheryl. “We have a great climate on the Peninsula for growing vegetables,” says Cheryl.

“The produce not only looks great but tastes amazing.”

Cheryl follows strict organic farming principles on Daniel’s Run Farm. When preparing the beds for the tomatoes, Cheryl never disturbs the soil. Instead, she adds compost and her own horse manure to the beds, sowing the soil with green manure crops that include flowers, herbs, and brassicas, and covering the soil with hay. The tomatoes are followed each season with climbing beans that help fix nutrients in the soil.

From December to May each year, she grows, harvests, and packs tomatoes that range in color when ripe from deep green to purple to orange to red. Some bear names like Alice’s Dream, Conqueror of Hearts, Spears Tennessee Green, and Noir de Crime.

“I only grow tomatoes that thrive here”

Unlike commercial tomatoes that are picked unripe and then ripened artificially using ethylene gas, Cheryl picks her tomatoes when fully ripe. This means that they are full-flavored, aromatic, and ready to eat straight away.

Daniel’s Run Farm tomatoes are sold directly to the public through ‘the tomato lovers club’ – a subscription scheme, in select local stockists during peak times, and are used in the kitchens in some of the best restaurants on the Mornington Peninsula.