July Harvest

Mid July is here and we are eating our first delicious heirloom watermelons, and melons. But first let me tell you that at the bottom of this blog post we will show you how to determine when watermelons are ripe in the field.

We are growing orange fleshed, white fleshed and red fleshed watermelons. Each color and variety has it's own special flavor. The white fleshed watermelon (in this case Cream of Saskatchewan) are very delicate and so we do not see them marketed due to poor ability to travel. The fun of local farming is that we are not needing to ship them half way across the world....so we get to enjoy the unique creamy flavor of the white....unknown to most.

We are also growing a "rare to us" Indian melon called Kajari, which I first saw in New Delhi, India. It is a very pretty mid to small sized melon that does really well in very hot dry weather. Though it looks like honeydew inside it is rather more like a cantaloupe in texture and taste. when fully ripe it is silky white and soft with the most delicious sweet cantaloupe like taste. You can get the seed at Baker Creek Heirloom seed company. They supplied us with the seed donation. Web address www.rareseeds.com

Below is a photo of the ripe and unripe stage. It will turn orange as seen below when ripening but you must let this one get a little soft before it is fully ripe. If it is crunchy and greenish that means it is not really ripe yet even though it may already have turned orange on the outside skin.

Another rare and fun melon is the Batik Samara. It is unique in that it has a slight tart limey like taste...perhaps not a good one for the American sweet tooth but I love it. Yum!

Below is a Blacktail Mountain watermelon. It is an early producer and a heavy producer. A nice medium sized watermelon for a couple or small family. It has a traditional red watermelon taste.

But our real favorite in the heirloom watermelons is the fantastic large Orange Glo watermelon. It has a citrus orange flavored overtone. We do not have any ripe yet but we are counting the days.

Watermelons seem to be selling well at the country store. We also are selling Golden and Striata Italia zucchini, Beit Alpha cucumbers, and heirloom tomatoes. That powder is

Brenda and Monica loading up the tomatoes.

Some Blacktail Mountain Watermelon just in out of the field.

Heirloom tomatoes. Left are Wapsipinicon Peach tomatoes, middle...assorted...mostly red, green and purple Vernissage tomatoes. Right are Purple Russians, Gold Medal and Barne's Mountain Yellow.