How to auto connect via SSH and Balsa?

[Bojan Land <landb mail net>]

I can get SSH to forward a port and get my mail that way through Balsa. 
But I can do this only if I manually forward the port.  I don't wish to
have it permenantly forwarded, so I'm wondering if Balsa has a preconnect
functionatlity?  I use fetchmail to pull all pop3 mail, figuring Balsa is
used for reading/writing mail.  But IMAP I must do through Balsa itself,
and I don't see a place where to put a "command to run to establish a
connection"... ?  Any clues?