Melons!

I’ll be at the Charlotte Regional Farmers’ Market tomorrow with:

Crimson sweet watermelons and small lambkin melons. Both are very sweet. Heirloom tomatoes in these varieties: Brandywine, Giant Belgium, Cherokee Purple, Limmony, Azoychka Russian, Kellogg’s Breakfast, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Giant Green, Black Krim, Persimmon, Bloody Butcher. The only hybrid I have is American Original Beefsteak. Also a beautiful cherry tomato mix.

Hmmmm. Perhaps someone is slightly obsessive?

Potatoes: German Butterball, Peppermint, Huckleberry Gold, Carola bakers; onions: sweet, red & cipollini; zephyr and lemon squash, mini fairytale eggplant  regular eggplant; okra; jalepenos; a variety of cucumbers; sweet potatoes; wheat berries.

Our grass fed, grass finished, Angus beef in these cuts: ribeyes, NY strips, filets, sirloins, flank, skirt, flat irons,  ground beef, stew beef, philly steak, cube steak, oso bucco, short ribs, brisket, soup bones, liver, sirloin tip roasts, eye of round and bone-in chuck roasts, and hot dogs and andouille sausage made from 100% grass fed beef without any nitrates/nitrites. We have marrow bones and oxtail tomorrow.

We finished taking up potatoes FINALLY and with help from Shane and David, thank you thank you thank you. It’s so hot, and wallowing around in the dirt for hours sweating buckets SUCKS. I knew I worked them too hard when David goes, “Jill you should be on that show Survivor. ” Baha! And now, I’m going to lower the price on my potatoes back to what it was 2 years ago because these are so huge that 2 potatoes is over a pound sometimes! Monstrosities. Makes for some nice baked potatoes though.

Lambkin melon. Very sweet, slightly crispy white flesh. Super yummy. I tasted these at a Slow Food workshop and I will definitely grow them again.

The watermelons take 90-100 days but they are coming in now, same as the 65 day Lambkins. Hey I’m not complaining, it’s just…mysterious.

Fairytale mini eggplant:

These are good caramelized, cut side down in a pan with coconut oil and balsamic, and salt.

Dinner is served! I love having small plates of different veggies that we can share, tapas style, at the patio bar.

We picked the corn and gave it to the lambs. Watching them eat it was super funny:

Last week, the weatherman said, all clear. LIES. Shane mowed all 40 acres of orchardgrass; it got rained on 4 times. That would have been a lot of high quality square bales for horse customers but now it’s just *better than a snowball* round bales for our horses. If they’ll eat it. It lost all it’s color and smell, I can’t speak for the flavor. This week they called for rain every day. UM HELLO NO RAIN. I’m talkin’ to YOU, Keith Monday!

I got my first batch of fall transplants started and I put them on the back of Leroy (the flatbed truck) so I could drive them into the shade until germination, then relocate as necessary. It’s really too hot to try to start them in the black plastic flats in full sun.

Anyway they germinated, and I was getting in the truck this morning to move it to the sun and both dogs jumped onto the back right into my flats of plants. BAD BAD DOGS! They aren’t allowed to get up there without being invited, but you know how that can go. Then I was super crabby about it all morning and finally decided it would be best to eat my emotions in the form of blackberry muffins. Double the blackberries, double the vanilla. My own whole wheat flour. Oh my GAAAAAAH. I thought that with double berries they would be a juicy, gooey mess which was perfect, cuz I was gonna slather it in butter and FACE PLANT all into it. Turned out to make nice muffins which I ate with a fork like a civilized human. Twelve. I ate 12 muffins. And I felt much much better.

See you tomorrow!