Paulette Whitney on her new Italian best friend.

Extending the tomato harvest deep into winter is a breeze with a new best friend, writes PAULETTE WHITNEY.

Last summer we made an investment. We didn’t sink our hard-earned into mining or retail shares, not even into more farmer-friendly carbon credits. Our investment was in a smooth, shiny, hard-working Italian.

Autumn in the temperate market garden is an epic marathon, when the opposing forces of seeding and harvest overlap – miss a sowing now and you’ll have no turnips or kale for winter harvest, and no broccoli for early spring. Leave a tomato in the field and a stray frost will turn it to mush overnight.

Crate after crate of tomatoes must be lugged quickly to the safety of the packing shed, for if you turn your back a moment too long the currawongs will spot your harvest and plunge their long, black beaks deep into the literal fruits of your labour.

At the end of a day spent racing birds and frosts the couch beckons. But no solace is to be found there; those crates of tomatoes won’t process themselves.

I feel immense gratitude when I go inside and see my new Italian friend, a whizz-bang electric passata mill, gleaming on the kitchen bench.

A mouli is a wonderful tool, de-seeding and skinning in one fell swoop, but last autumn, after a great crop, processing hundreds of kilos of tomatoes left me feeling like an archer from the fantasy novels of my youth, with a bulging, overdeveloped right arm from hours of winding after an already exhausting day. My new Italian friend apparently has the power of two and a half horses, all invested in mushing and de-seeding tomatoes – thus turning the agonising work of hours into a doddle of minutes that the children argue over the chance to help with. So the poor mouli is relegated to the back of the kitchen cupboard, much to the relief of my right arm.

When we want to preserve tomatoes for sale we have to hire a kitchen, so popping my Italian friend into the van along with the crates of tomatoes means we can make the most of our day’s investment in council-sanctioned stainless steel and sell Tasmanian passata to Tasmanian kitchens for a reasonable price. We also fill baskets for the journey with heads of garlic to be roasted whole and fed into the mill along with the tomatoes. We pluck the richly scented flowering heads of basil to tuck into jars just before we process them in a water bath – add them any sooner and they’ll lose their magic. Branches of bay, thyme, oregano and sage join the party, too, all adding their extra savoury flavours to the already delicious tomatoes, and making a winter pasta dish the work of moments.

I cannot imagine a winter without tomatoes – spaghetti Bolognese, ragù, lasagne, minestrone. The mill even makes homemade tomato paste a doable proposition, and a Bloody Mary made with our very own fruit is the best way to warm a winter brunch.

There is a peculiar correlation between when an early frost is forecast and the rare occasion we get dolled up to go out for dinner. It seems that one night, late in April, always sees us alighting from the car after some merrymaking and heading to the garden, arms laden with household linen to drape over frost-tender tomatoes, squash and tomatillos in the hope of ripening just a few more kilos.

And if, after all that effort, we still fancy fighting the weather to stretch the harvest, we may pull the plants from the ground and hang them upside-down under the eaves where fruit has been known to continue to ripen well into June – lacking the flavour of sun-kissed summer fruit, but welcome all the same to freshen up a winter sandwich.

The currawongs often have the last laugh, though, descending from the skies to steal the last of the fruit. But I’ll feel even more gratitude for that shiny Italian who helped me tuck ample fruit into my larder to help get me through winter.

My new Italian friend apparently has the power of two and a half horses, all invested in mushing and de-seeing tomatoes.