Farmer Luca has been growing trials of many different kinds of watermelons and other melons this spring at ARTfarm. Today we will have four types for you to try! (Limited quantities, so arrive early if you possibly can.) Frankly, we love them all, but please give us your feedback on what are your favorites so Luca can plan to grow more of the best ones. They taste sweetest when chilled, if you can wait long enough!

The heirloom watermelon varieties we are growing tend to have many prominent seeds (compared to a commercial supermarket type watermelon). While everyone knows that the modern advent of the seedless watermelon has saved humankind countless tedious hours of spitting, our robust and weighty old fashioned seeds can be useful as more than mere projectiles at an outdoor children’s gathering. Of course they can be saved and planted, but they can also be prepared and eaten: The seeds can be juiced; or sprouted, then ground into a sprouted grain flour and used in gluten-free baking; perhaps a more accessible use for the lay watermelon-seed-eater would be to rinse and dry them, then prepare them much like salty roasted pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Here’s a recipe we found online!

Come to the South Shore this morning and hook up your week with organically produced fresh fruits and veggies, herbs and other treats: Sweet salad mix, teen spicy salad mix, bunched arugula, a few bunches of kale and Kan Kong (Asian water spinach) and of sweet potato greens, loads of bell peppers, all three of our hot/seasoning types of peppers, the end of the tomatoes for this season, Italian basil, parsley, recao (culantro), rosemary, lemongrass, garlic chives, a few bunches of onions, radishes, a couple of shaddock (giant grapefruit-like citrus), lots of passionfruit, pumpkin, various types of watermelons – whole and cut, beautiful papayas, fresh ginger root, and loads of amazing zinnia flowers.

Everything we grow is free of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. We are not a certified organic farm, but we grow everything as though we were – meeting or exceeding national organic production standards set by the USDA and keeping careful records – because we want to. Healthier for us, healthier for you, healthier for the soil, healthier for the planet. We are health nuts and we want to improve our soil with every crop and we are obsessive about it. Don’t get us started unless you’ve really got some time on your hands! 🙂

We have fresh local goat cheese  from Fiddlewood Farms! Freak out! It’s so good!!!