John Parry is a fifth-generation farmer in Chester County and, as he's fond of saying, dude, you'd better believe he's like none who came before.

They were all dairy farmers. He's a former motorcycle racer and table-tennis competitor who knows plenty about cows. But a decade ago, he tossed it all over for tomatoes, a crop he knew absolutely nothing about.

Today, Parry - known as "Tomato Man" - rides an organic, heritage-crazed wave that shows no signs of flagging. He grows 350 all-organic, heirloom tomato plants on four acres in Cochranville to sell exclusively to restaurants.

"I'm the only nut in the family," he says.

Some nut. Last year, Parry, 54, sold every one of his tomatoes and everything else, too, including asparagus, sweet corn, cabbage, brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, potatoes, beans, beets, lettuce, and peppers.

He relates all this with an uninhibited joy that is fun to share and also puzzling, given that he often labors alone in the fields for 15 hours a day, seven days a week. He takes time out for a "real job" as an appliance repairman; for Debbie, his wife of 28 years; for three grown kids and five grandkids; for his beloved Harley-Davidson and Triumph motorcycles; and for all things John Deere.

But tomatoes, crop number one, have taken over his being to such an extent that Parry says he'd rather be called "Tomato Man" than John. This, after a friend yelled, "Yo, tomato man!" at him. Even the mailing label on his Lancaster Farming newspaper reads: "Tomato Man."

Parry reveals these nuggets on the fly. We're poking around the barnlike "shed" he built with a buddy and meandering through 375-foot rows of heirlooms such as Brandywine, Pineapple, Hillbilly, and White Queen.

The soil is fragrant, spongy; the plants are staked inside bamboo tepees, tied with twine above and below. This provides more support and less stress than tomato cages, Parry says.

Every few feet we're plucking exquisitely ripe, sun-warmed cherry tomatoes off the vine and popping them into our mouths whole. No baby greens or balsamico, just one luscious tomato bomb after another.

"Oh, this is fun!" Parry crows. "This is what I love."

He's oblivious to the temperature, which is over 90, and the humidity, which is wilting. In the distance, toward Lancaster County, the sky is darkening ominously, as it has so often this summer, but no matter.

"Oh my God!" Parry suddenly yells, wide-eyed, as he plops a tiny Sun Gold cherry tomato into his mouth. "It's so good." He's had, what, a hundred of these so far this week, thousands in the last decade? He eats tomatoes all day as he works.

Sun Gold is his favorite, and he's not alone in that. This petite orange cherry has a cultlike following. "Tastes like candy," people say, which sounds like a load of baloney till you taste one.

Like everyone else, Parry had to wait a little longer for this year's tomatoes to ripen because of a cooler-than-normal spring. But he expects to be buried in heirlooms in another week.

May the gods be with him. Frankly, he may need the help.

Parry's tomatoes appear to have been hit with a serious fungus that could be late blight, the devastating disease that's already affected gardens and growers up and down the East Coast. He's been monitoring his plants closely and spraying heavily with an organic copper fungicide, which he hopes will contain the problem.

Time will tell. Experts say small, diligently managed crops may survive in prolonged warm, dry weather, but extensive rain and cool temperatures could cause the disease to spread. And spraying copper, though it may inhibit some late-blight infection, usually isn't enough to stave off the plants' eventual death - or so say the experts.

Says Parry: "They're not out here."

Out here, fields are enriched with cow manure, mushroom soil (aged two years), and homemade compost, which creates a soft, organic bed for the tomato seedlings that Parry plants in early May. He puts a handful of lime and compost into the hole, then the plant, then Epsom salt, more lime and compost.

Pinching comes later, and this is a subject gardeners don't agree on. Parry votes yes - absolutely yes - pinch those tiny suckers growing in the crevice between the branches and your main stem. You may get fewer tomatoes, he says, but they'll be big as baseballs.

Parry also pinches off small branches below the first row of blossoms to send more energy into the plant. He even pinches to determine if the fruit's ripe. "When you pinch a tomato and it feels like your arm, it's ready to pick," he says.

Every two years, Parry moves his tomato plants to a different field to keep the soil healthy and yields high. He uses only organic products, weeds by hand, and waters sparingly.

Sure seems to be working.

His Italian Tree heirlooms top out at 20 feet. He swears his Brandywines - pink, red, yellow and black - can weigh three bulbous pounds each. As for Celebrity, one of his few hybrids, it routinely puts out 40 fruits at one time on a single plant.

But for the occasional hailstorm, freak frost, drought or blight, knock on wood, Tomato Man's "garden" - and he insists it's a garden, not a farm - grows on. "I want to do this till I die," he says.

At this point, Parry insists his body doesn't even ache. How can that be? You watch him kneel and bend and bound through the fields before concluding, dude, it checks out.

Is it mind over matter?

Actually, it's probably the delicious opposite: Matter - make that tomatoes - over mind.

Contact gardening writer Virginia A. Smith at 215-854-5720 or vsmith@phillynews.com.