Melon serendipity

Not only does Filigreen farm organically, they’re also certified biodynamic. We were surprised and so excited to hear they have a huge flush of blueberries right now. At this point in the domestic blueberry season, most supply has moved up to the Pacific Northwest. Most of what you’d find at the store are blues grown in Oregon and Washington. Even all the way in Japan, we found grocery store blueberries grown in Oregon! We’re pretty stoked to have this flush of delicious blues from the sweet Anderson Valley. The Sharpblue blueberry variety is tiny yet packed with flavor and just so so sweet. Enjoy this wonderful surprise in August, and store in the fridge.

Front Porch Farm’s Triple Crown blackberries are the blackberries we always seek out when they’re in season. They are a fave variety of ours –and theirs! Similar to other crops, this year’s blackberries from Front Porch are about a month delayed but now they’re really coming on so you bet we’re going to eat as many as we can for the next few weeks. Triple Crowns have a softer texture, a lovely brightness and a nice pop of acidity. Store these in the fridge.

This has been a rough local raspberry season for a lot of growers, with some even losing their crop to the Spring flooding in Watsonville. These Kwanza raspberries from Yerena Farm are the first raspberries to make into a FQ box and the tough local season makes us even more grateful. Big, red, juicy and ripe, these raspberries just melt in your mouth and exude the most intoxicating sweet raspberry scent. Store in the fridge. 

These Bella Royale peacotums from Blossom Bluff Orchards are a real eye catcher. With a hint of fuzz like a peach, juicy like a plum, and soft like an apricot, this peach-apricot-plum hybrid has become quite popular over the years. If you let it sit a few too many days on the counter, it definitely leans more plum. For us, peacotums mark the late summer stone fruit chapter in this bountiful season. Store at room temp.

Peel back the straw-colored papery husk and you’ve got yourself a yummy little Cape gooseberry (Peruvian groundcherry). These are grown by our friends Kenny and Molly at Lonely Mountain Farm. They’re easy to eat with no seeds or pits and every one seems to offer a surprise. They’re juicy with notes of pineapple and grapes and acidity that reminds us of cherry tomatoes. If you’re wondering, yes, these are in the same family as tomatoes (Solanaceae)! Store them in a cool dry place (fridge is fine but lower humidity is better).

Carine and Robert Hines of Sun Tracker Farm sure know how to grow extremely delicious melons. We’re calling this a “Charentais-style” melon because its origin and exact genetics is a bit of a mystery. It definitely isn’t their favorite Sivan charentais melon variety that they typically grow every year. They noticed something was unusual with the seeds when germination was super slow, especially compared to seeds they had saved from last year’s Sivan melon harvest. Once the melons started to fruit, they knew immediately it wasn’t the same variety. But in this case, serendipity is delicious! This variety is super tasty: sweet, fragrant, and tastes like summer. (We do want you to know that a crop of Sivan Charentais – a fruitqueen and Sun Tracker fave alike – is coming in future weeks.). Store these in the fridge and please eat your melons chilled. The melons do exhibit some white and grey scarring. It does not affect the quality of the good stuff inside. This is caused when the adolescent melon receives pest pressure – that is, insects nibbling on the young melon’s thin skin – before the plant heals itself. Organic agriculture!