Alex's Tomato Farm

Alex Kravets’ father, a dentist, started farming in the Ukraine as a hobby.
But before long he was running a successful produce business, operating six greenhouses just outside the city and extending the growing season at a time when tomatoes in Eastern Europe were virtually impossible to find until July or August. “These things were valued very highly,” Alex explains, “Nobody was doing what my father was doing, almost everything agricultural was managed by the government.”

In 1986, just before the fall of the Soviet Union, the private sector in the Ukraine was completely dissolved. “All markets were closed in a matter of a few weeks,” Alex says, “My father was very disappointed with the government’s decision. Everything he was working for was basically for nothing.” That’s when Mr. Kravet’s decided to move to New York.

He worked as a dental assistant for the first few years, all the while looking for a place to continue farming. Seven years later, when he was 17 years old, Alex joined his father in Carlisle, New York and in 2000 they had purchased their first forty acres of land. Now the Kravets’ cultivate 70 acres of land, growing herbs, flowers, apples, plums, pears, beans, greens, squash, sweet corn, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and more!

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