Holy Moly, a Ton of Tomatoes

The fields are giving us so much produce right now we're running out of storage containers and storage space! But that is a good problem to have, right? I think so. It does add a bit of stress to our days until we can safely stow all of the goodies, but we're slowly doing so. The big event this weekend was the unexpected cantaloupe haul. They seemed to ripen all at once. Friday we went out mid-day to gather what was ripe, initially thinking we're retrieve a bin or two. Ten full bins later we were satisfied we should wait two more days for more to ripen. Two more days later and 80% of the total harvestable fruit is out of the field after 3 hours of hot Sunday work (another 15 bins or so). Two more days from now we'll check again and the patch will be clear and we can check that off the to-do list.

All of the onions are out of the field - thanks to everyone who helped with that task - and will be distributed starting this week. The second planting of watermelon beckons us now and we'll focus on that tomorrow and/or Tuesday. Our "watermelon room" is half full with onions and cantaloupe but we'll make sure we get them in there as well. Potatoes will be started whenever we have sufficient bin and storage space so either later this week or next week. It's still early for them so we're not (too) worried. Hopefully there will be some dry weather to enable an easier time harvesting.

Tomatoes seem to be peaking right now. Last Thursday alone we harvest about 500 pounds of heirlooms from the high tunnel and 500 pounds from the field. Add that to Monday's haul and it's a ton of tomatoes. Fortunately our 2nd planting hasn't kicked in yet; hopefully that'll get going when the 1st one starts to wind down. We hope you are enjoying this mid-summer bounty!