Do you know what's really hard to grow here? Melons. And a lot of cucurbits (squash, cucumber, pumpkin, etc.) but mostly melons. There's this terrible thing us farmers are cursed with called downy mildew and it reeks absolute havoc on most varieties of melons. We have had success with growing several varieties of watermelon, as I am sure most of you long time CSA members are aware of, but we have never successfully produced a large crop of other melons...until NOW! We have had a plot of canary melons in the works for some months now and they are finally ready for harvest. These melons are sweet but not too sweet, flavorful but not too flavorful and incredibly refreshing, but I'm not biased...
We will be selling the canary melons either by the whole fruit or half, for reference the whole is between 5-6 lbs and the half would be, well half of that. In addition to these yellow beauties we also just harvested the bulk of our watermelon crop so we will have lots of these available in the coming weeks. Cucurbits will definitely be dominating our boxes this week between our cucumbers, melons and pumpkins, but hey I'm not complaining. We will also have some goodies from our orchard such as mango, avocado and genip bunches. I will be making zinnia bunches again this week so if you're feeling like you need a little more color in your life make sure to request a bunch. Hopefully for those of you who ordered them last week the pick up was easy, but if you have any suggestions as to how to make that system better please let us know!
This week we said goodbye to three of our all star apprentices, Alaina, Dane and Matt. Alaina and Dane were with us for 6 months and Matt was here for 9 and it is because of them that we were able to plant and grow many of the delicious fruits and veggies you guys order each week. They'll be heading back to the States to solve the world's problems so send them some good vibes as they transition into new roles.
As always we look forward to seeing everyone this weekend whether that be at Leatherback or Little LaGrange. As always don't forget to stop at the Farm Tienda and give Saerah some lovin', she'll be missing her farm stand partners Matt and Dane so she'll need extra visitors this week!
All the best,
Elizabeth and the Farm Crew
