As I’ve mentioned many times before, we haul fresh produce from two farmers markets every day and feed our pigs and our cows with it. For the pigs, it’s their main ration. For the cows, it’s a supplement. Today we had a call that there was a trailer of watermelons the farmer wanted us to take. Since the only trailer I’d seen was a class 8 (tractor-trailer sized) trailer, I wasn’t sure what we were getting into.
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Here is a picture of the trailer as we found it at the market. A heavy-duty tag trailer loaded to the gills with watermelons and ready to depart as soon as we backed up to it. Now I didn’t take this thing across the scales but I’ve pulled plenty of heavy loads and if this trailer didn’t have 18,000-20,000 pounds of watermelons on it, it didn’t have any.
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The trailer after we’d safely arrived home. Some of these watermelons are fine and some are definitely not any good. But all were already loaded, covered, and the trailer was ours for the taking. As a goodwill gesture we are going to fix a few things wrong with the trailer while we have it because this entire endeavor cost me gas and time. Not a bad return on investment.
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This is part of the load already spread in the pasture. These watermelons won’t go to the pigs or the cows. There are simply too many watermelons for our animals all at once and keeping them around just allows them to go bad. So instead we place the watermelons in an area where the grass is underperforming. This load of melons will add a ton, actually many tons of organic matter and water to an area where the soil is lacking. Next year, this area’s soil will be black and dark and prime for growing grass, and most likely, watermelons.
We will break open these melons and allow the chickens, the birds, and my bees to have their fill for the next few days. From below the worms and bugs will be doing a number on whatever is in contact with the ground. I wonder if this means we’ll have watermelon honey this fall. May be worth taking out one comb just to sample.