№38 — Erich Stekovics
If anyone knows me or my family, they know that our conversations mostly revolve around food. The daily menu plan is a drawn out discussion with at least three different opinions per person. And usually discussions about the next meal start at dessert of the previous meal. So we decided to visit a very interesting food producer, Erich Stekovics.
Mr. Stekovics is relatively well known in Austria among people interested in food, primarily because he produces an insane amount of tomato varieties and all of that organic. My father met him a few weeks ago and he invited us to visit his farm in Burgenland.
Have you ever seen a garlic field? Or eaten a garlic raw straight from the field? Or did you know that garlic always has nine leaves, irrespective of location? I haven’t either until that day. But I learned so much about garlic and organic farming in general, I absolutely loved it.
To give you some food for thought: the average Austrian consumes 200g of garlic a year. A 250g package of regular, imported garlic EUR 1.99 while the locally produced, organic garlic is EUR 2.49. So 50 cents difference for a whole year. Still most people will pick the cheapest available option, even though it hardly has an impact on ones personal finance.
If you ever get around the Neusiedler See and are sick of the shallow water, check out his farm. If you book early enough, you can even do a tomato tour where he takes you through his fields of tomatoes. You can eat as much as you want until you cannot see any tomatoes any more.
