The first watermelon have been harvested!  Hot diggity!   We immediately popped one of those big boys open and snarfed down that tasty flesh.  Everyone wants the heart, but I  beat them to it on the first melon, so the guys decided they had to pop open another one.  Here on this farm it does not take much to figure out a way to get another melon to sample - one just accidentally dropped - oops!  It had a dent.  Darn!  It was funny shaped!  Dang!  Anyway, watermelon is full of great minerals, so let them eat watermelon and drink less Gatorade.  Unfortunatley, they are not coming in very fast yet, but hopefully they will catch up.

We have continued to harvest onions, trying to get them all out.  We are so busy right now that our average is two sets a week.  At that rate we will get done by Thanksgiving.  Chad took the two interns out Friday and got one extra set pulled, so at this new rate of three a week we will be done by Halloween.  So Sunday, Jon (who has now left for school) went to Champaign and picked up two buddies who have never had the opportunity to play onion ball.  Poor boys!  Their goal is to get three more sets out.  They may not have been too fond of onion ball by the time they were done.  But, in order to leave a good impression, Jon wanted to have a bon fire with watermelon margueritas and lamb brats. Wonder which activity the fellows would have enjoyed more?  Unfortunately, they got rained out and only one set of onion was harvested.

This is the season of fatigue.  Three days last week I got only 2-3 hours sleep.  Usually what ends up overwhleming me is paper.  I stay so busy with field supervision and market, that I skip paper when I get in at night.  All I want is food and a shower and a nice pillow.  I think if you talk to most farmers right now they would concur that they are tired.  It is truly a shame we can't all take a week and go away just before the busy, busy season begins.  Please forgive us if we get spacy or a little cranky.  We are just revealing our fatigue as farmers.  

Your box

Gold zucchini

Cantaloupe

Mixed pepper basket - all hot except for the sweet chocolate - Save hot peppers for winter use by chopping and freezing.  No need to blanch

Small finger size green = Serrano

Larger green - Jalapeno

Yellow - hot banana

Brownish red - Sweet Chocolate

Heirloom cucumber - round yellow is a lemon cuke; long yellow or rust is a Poona Khera - you got one or the other

Sweet corn

Celery - we clipped out some stalks if they had insect damage

Swiss chard

Cherry tomatoes