Life moves along so quickly these days…a hot summer turns into a colorful autumn. It is October but today we ate the last piece of local summer’s watermelon, we extended the summer with this last piece of sweet summer. We will soon be moving onto this season’s beautiful food from the fertile Franklin County valley in PA.
We have learned how to pick ripe watermelons while gleaning for The Gleaning Project of South Central PA. Consumer’s demand in our area is for seedless watermelons, hence that’s what growers grow. The rounder ones (female) are the ones we gathered during our field time, on the other hand, the larger oblong seeded-watermelons (males) are needed to fertilize, so we also gathered those.
It’s always a good exercise day when we are gleaning watermelons, when gleaners arrive on the site they stretch before lifting and are warned – safety first. Thus we do a lot of safe bending, twisting and lifting in the fields. Enjoying nature, exercising and gathering food for the less fortunate is truly a breath of FRESH air! Support our growers by purchasing local vegetables and fruits.
So today we cut open our last local watermelon. And BOY was it sweet and delicious! Enjoy each season.
