Unfortunately most of this year's crop ended up as sauce or frozen whole due to much smaller production. We shoot for about 1500 medium to full size tomatoes off of about 45 - 50 plants, and that easily puts us in fresh, frozen, dried and sauce tomatoes for the year, the total for this year was around 600.When hail and wind storms devastated our gardens in July it was too late to replant tomatoes as we did with many other crops. So We had to cut them back and let them regrow, most of the indeterminate ones survived but only put out half as many tomatoes as normal. Many of our determinate plants died.
Determinate tomatoes, or "bush" tomatoes, stop growing when fruit sets on the top bud. Most of their crop ripens near the same time. Indeterminate tomatoes are vining and will grow and keep producing until the first frost does them in. They will set fruit throughout the growing season, and are our favorite type of tomato plants.
Burpee Long Keeper is a semi-determinate plant. They are of small to medium size thick skinned and orange-red color when ripe. Definitely not the most tasty or beautiful tomato but if you want to have a great keeper this one gets an A+ from me.
If someone else has a good keeper, please do tell?
I usually just use my fingers to pull the root hairs off and then use a potato peeler to finish the job. Try to leave as much of the skin on as possible, I think it improves the flavor and health benefits.
Chop the ends off and dice up all the scraps for your chickens or mulch pile.
Then simply slice the roots about 1/8 " thick, place on a tray in the oven, and roast at around 225° for about 2 hours. They can also be dehydrated or dried over a wood stove but may lose the roasted flavor.
The finished product is then ground up fine for a coffee maker or more coarsely for a percolator. You only need to use about a third of the amount you would coffee.
The same thing can be done with dandelion roots, I have tried that but much prefer endive. The biggest problem is keeping my wife out of the chips which are delicious on their own - she eats them faster than I can grind them. While quite satisfactory by itself, we usually do a 70-30% mix of coffee to endive.
various beets, 
that are stored in our basement/root cellar. As needed, we bring some of the plants upstairs and keep them next to a window so they get light and the pale new growth that has sometimes already started is allowed to change into a more natural healthy color.
The leaves are then cut and used in salads. The root or stalk on all of these is also used at that point. Most of these plants will send out more growth but it will not be as vigorous and the root will become less palatable. This also works well for onions that have started to spoil, instead of the mulch pile we can usually get them to send up some fresh shoots first by simply providing warmth and a little dampness to the roots. 
A salsa was made from frozen tomatillos, garlic, onions and some spices that Mrs. H. threw in.
Note the root vegetables are still alive and full of life unlike the poisoned non-organic, or limp organic produce found in the store, least wise in Idaho this time of year. 
The hens did discover that they could fly and have gotten into the greener pastures that are my garden a few times but no serious damage was done. We feed them as much garden produce as they can stand all summer and as much as we can come up with in the winter. They go absolutely crazy over purple 
Egg production has been excellent, it took a little training to get them to come in and lay every day but persistence paid off and they now all seem to understand what the nest boxes are for. Just today, and with it being only 25°, they still laid 9 eggs. We have not had a single day so far this winter without at least a couple eggs.
We go out of our way to feed the chickens various greens, grated beets, carrots, squash, and cooked potatoes on a daily basis.
They also get daily apples, flakes of alfalfa hay, and any other left over scraps that we can come up with that may prove beneficial to the chickens health.
I believe that the food we give them is one of the reasons that they have not stopped laying and seem to be so healthy. The whole reason that we have chickens is to get nutritious eggs that are certainly not available at the 
Interestingly enough, given a choice, the grains that they always have access to are the last thing they want to eat. We hope to sell enough of the extra eggs to pay for grains that we must still buy, thus making the flock self-sufficient. We do not yet grow the amount of grains it would take to feed the chickens all year, but hope to do so in the future.
Sleeping quarters come complete with an electric oil heater and lights. The heater is only used if it gets below 25° outside we also added a heating pad for their water dish. 
Normally, least wise within the last 5 years, we do not get this much snow all at once. I have had a couple of my row covers collapse under the weight of the snow as I did not get them shoveled off fast enough. They will handle around 1 1/2 feet of snow before they start to buckle under the pressure. The row cover in the picture is 3' tall and the snow to the left of it is over 5'.
do better than the ones in our cold frames and we are still trying to perfect growing greens for the winter in our unheated greenhouse.
I am always looking to improve the sturdiness of our row covers as it would appear that the winters around here are going to get a bit harsher. This is the front of our house 5 days ago.
