What’s Growing This Week:  Peaches Potatoes Onions Cukes Green beans Tomatoes Melon Yellow Watermelon

 Pablito....

WATERMELON WARRANTY
We have gotten a few complaints, as we do every year, from people who got a dud watermelon.  This is unavoidable with watermelons, since they haven’t genetically engineered them with see-through skins to see how ripe they are.

Harvesting watermelon is one of the toughest jobs on the farm.  Cantelopes or honeydews completely change color and their stems actually “slip” off the fruit when ripe.  Watermelons, on the other hand, give much more subtle indications.  A dried tendril on the plant just above the melon, a brightly colored spot where the melon sits on the ground, and a particular resonance when the melon is tapped — any one of these can be an indicator of ripeness.  But they are all subjective indicators — they can change from one type of watermelon to another, and even from one planting to the next of the same variety.  Three people can examine one watermelon and have three different opinions about it.  And every once in a while, a watermelon will have all three indicators — good ground spot, a dried tendril, AND the perfect resonance — and still be not quite ripe.

Every year, Paul Holmes trains 2-3 people to read the signs and pick our watermelons.  Those people are the only people you will find harvesting watermelons all season (and they never seem to come back the next year.  Hmmm)
Each watermelon plant has 4-5 fruit on it, 1 plant every 18 inches, 250 feet in a bed.  That’s about 800 melons in each bed that need to be checked for the signs.  Luckily, watermelons have a concentrated ripening.  The first day we harvest the field, there is usually no more than one ripe melon on each plant — often not every plant has a ripe melon.  This first day in each field is the trickiest, so the crew has to be extra careful in checking each melon they pick.  It’s rare that more than 1 in 50 melons picked that day would be duds, but if they are, they will be underripe.  Unripe melons have seeds that are yellow or brown instead of black, and the flesh is more white than yellow or red.  They will often taste like cucumbers.

Two days later, we usually harvest 2-4 of the remaining melons from each plant.  On this day, I would be lying if I said that every single melon gets inspected carefully.  There are so many ripe melons in the field at this point that many are picked without checking at all; others are picked if just one indicator is noticed.   This is the point the margin of error is the same as above, maybe 1 in 50 melons that might be underripe.  However, it’s important to remember that we probably pick 1000 or more melons this single day.

The last day we pick the field, there is usually only one or two melons left on each plant, and only one is perfect.  The other will be either overripe (“pasado”) or underripe.   The flesh of an overripe melon can be mealy and saccarin-sweet, or it can be watery and washed-out looking.  But either way, the seeds will be black. The problem with overripe melons is that they will have two of the indicators of a ripe melon — a dried tendril and a bright ground spot.  The only way to tell they are overripe is to tap them and listen — their sound is dull, instead of resonant.

Between the overripe and underripe melons in the field on the last day we pick, there is much more room for error.  We probably get 1 in 20 melons that are duds on these days.  We try to be on top of this as possible — having an experienced person not only harvesting the melons but actually listening to each one before we put them into your CSA boxes, but we will never achieve perfection.  Long story short:  when we pack 150 CSA boxes in a day, anywhere from 3 to 7 families are going to get a watermelon that is either overripe or underripe.

We have set up a 24/7, fully staffed call center to counsel the recipients of these bum melons, because we know how traumatic it can be…  An household of expectant melon-munchers confronted with a flavorless or mushy watermelon can be permanently scarred by this experience...

But seriously, I mentioned this at the start of the season:  If you get a dud watermelon, please e-mail or call and ask for a credit.  We know it’s going to happen, and there’s nothing else we can do — until that genetic engineering thing with the translucent-skinned watermelons.

WHERE’S MY T.V.?
Perusing the farming publications this weekend, an article jumped out at me about a family farm in Oregon that grows green beans — approximately 300 acres of them.  Always curious, I read on to see how green bean growers can afford to sell their crop for so little money.  At TFF, we hand-harvest our green beans.  An amazingly time-consuming effort, it’s well-justified for the return we get from the  CSA or at farmers’ markets, but it’s impossible to compete selling to grocery stores.  Produce buyers this time of year pay about 50 cents a pound for organic beans, while it takes one person here about an hour to pick 10 pounds.  Do the math and you see how much you’re losing if you’re paying anything above minimum wage.

Not surprisingly, the Lewis Farm in Oregon harvests their beans mechanically, with a harvester bigger than any of our tractors.  Not only that, but they harvest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through the season.

This was what surprised me: Their night-shift driver says that he used to get bored running the harvester all night long.  So he installed a TV in the cab:  “I watch about 10 hours of TV through the night, anything from Jerry Springer to COPS to Star Trek or whatever’s on.  With the bean pickers we use, all we have to do is steer — everything’s automatic.”  In case you were ever wondering, we don’t have TV’s on our tractors here at TFF.  Yet.

Thanks,            Pablito
 
 

Recipes       ............................

Fall River Vegetable Stew
From Sundays at Moosewood.  I’m trying to remember that a majority of our subscribers are currently experiencing cold, foggy nights that lend themselves to cooked meals.
In a large soup pot, saute 1 large chopped onion and 4 minced cloves of garlic until the onion softens.  Stir in 1 lb. Potatoes, cut into chunks, 2 carrots cut into rounds, and 2 T. sweet paprika.  Saute for 3 minutes over medium heat.
Pour in 1 C. vegetable stock, 2 lbs. Chopped tomatoes, 2 bay leaves, and 1 C. dry red wine.  Cover and simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.  Add 1/2 –1 lb. Trimmed and halved green beans and 3 C. sliced mushrooms, then simmer for another 30 minutes.  Add 1 C. corn kernels and simmer another 15 minutes, or until the carrots are tender.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Salad Nicoise — this is more like it for us in Winters
Make a vinagrette with 1/4 C. wine vinegar, 1/2 C. olive oil, 1 t. Dijon mustard, 1 minced clove of garlic, and 2 T. fresh basil.
Boil water and blanch, separately:  2 C. trimmed and cut green beans, 2 cubed potatoes, and 1 C. thinly sliced peppers.  Refresh under cold water.   Toss in a large bowl with the vinagrette plus 6 artichoke hearts, 2 sliced tomatoes, 2 T. capers, 12 Nicoise olives, and 1 can of tuna.
 

Produce 101: preparation & storage  PEACHES  this week come from Eatwell Farm here in Winters and are CCOF certified. ONIONS are getting ugly as we approach the end of our June-harvested stores.  New onions will be ready in late August. TFF POTATOES are fresh dug, and must be kept in the refrigerator to prevent spoilage and sprouting.  They keep best in a paper or plastic bag.

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Contact Valerie through voicemail at (530) 756-2800, or e-mail Goldenbell@aol.com

MAILING ADDRESS:
Terra Firma Farm
P.O. Box 836
Winters, CA 95694
(530) 756-2800
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Goldenbell@aol.com
 

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