Thursday, September 15, 2016

The official water melon harvest has begun

It's time! Time to pull in those deliciously juicy watermelons that have been growing for a while.

There are two varieties growing this year, a pink flesh heirloom and a white flesh heirloom. the pink flesh one has a hardy rind, good for transport and storage. But the white flesh one, not so much. In fact, these are so fragile that just thumping them in the traditional "is it ripe" test will cause them to burst. But oh so yummy! Because of this, we have decided to leave the white flesh on in the garden, and feed daily the ones that burst (besides what we steal for ourself) but the pink flesh one we are harvesting and storing in the walk in cooler (the back end of the farm kitchen / fermenting room / cheese cave).

 So far.. a rough estimate is about 120 melons harvested, averaging 15 lbs each, for a total of 1800 lbs of watermelons. That accounts for about 3/4 of the total harvest expected of the pink flesh heirloom. These pigs never had it so good!

If you would like to purchase a organically grown, vine ripened, heirloom watermelon of either variety, please contact us. We may not put these in the online store, but will sell them for about $1 per lb if you care to come pick up at the farm. There are all sizes from 1lb to 25 lbs.


The watermelon patch before harvest... the blank spot in the middle is our initial test harvest (yum!)
This is a good example of the pink flesh heirloom variety, this one is about 20 lbs
These striped ones are the white flesh heirloom, smaller and much more delicate but no less tasty
Kaelyn's favorite... its a pink flesh but as heirlooms go, there is a lot of variety. This gem has beautiful markings!
The harvest so far... about 30% left to pull in when time permits. This end of the kitchen stays around 70 degrees year round, perfect for melon storing. 

No comments:

Post a Comment