Taste of July

This has been the summer of cucurbits, especially Seminole pumpkin and watermelon which have taken over the organic beds for the season. We are not disappointed, and neither are our birds or the way-too-tame deer that abuses Cactus Island as its personal salad bar. Despite the relentless young buck that thinks I’m playing tag with it when I try to chase it off the property at dusk, Mom is still filling the cornucopia and freezer with an excess of its favorite beans for our enjoyment. She has put in several long shifts baking, freezing or canning our harvest while I tend cactus, but I’ll be helping when the lion’s share comes inside later this week.

The upside of a harsh winter studded with 26dg mornings is that more chill hours probably pumped up our sand pears to branch-bending fruition. The delicious canned results so far will last a few years, and we’ll use them on toast and in yogurt for starters. Native sandhill pawpaw, on the other hand, break hearts. The only one we’ve ever seen, and protected with the wire fence cage, went down like a smash&grab jewel shop heist. During recent tropical storm preparation we forgot to monitor it as it ripened. The fat, bold squirrel working the House Lawn reached in and took it before I had a chance to finish putting fine netting around the cage.

We have never seen 57lb watermelon before, but these Charleston Grey’s plunged the scale and were the best tasting we’ve ever eaten. The hens get the leftover rinds and some of the fruit left within. Also, Seminole pumpkin pie is wonderful, and it is a bit lighter than the canned pumpkin filling familiar to so many. It was a nice reward after a long day of processing cactus fruit (pulp in bowl next to pie). The leaves of Seminole pumpkin vines have evolved a whitish disease marking to discourage deer, which avoid eating blighted plants on sight. There are about 20 left to pick with more probably to form on the newest creeping vines.