eat carolina food challenge day two

This post is part of the week long Eat Carolina Food Challenge where participants are asked to submit a blog post every day of the challenge. Posts from all the other participants are aggregated on the Carolina Farm Stewardship website.

At about a pint a day, I have eaten enough blueberries this year to earn my keep in the produce department. And that is just from the commercial berry producers. I haven’t even had time to go picking on the abandoned blueberry farm or the various wild patches scattered around the city.

This time of year is perfect for folks who like to stay cool by burying themselves in fruit, and by bury I mean eat a whole lot of it. If all you ate was fruit, you would have a hard time going hungry right now. Blueberries are going strong and are at peak sweetness. Galia melons are cracking with sugar, giving off their sweet bubblegum smell, practically daring you to eat the whole thing. Blackberries bring the tart while watermelons bring the grass covered in “discarded” seeds, thrown out of people’s mouths by physics and festival contests. Then there are honeydews, charentais, sugar babies, crenshaws, casabas, moon and stars. And of course the fruits that most people don’t think of as fruit – tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers to name a few.

This is also the perfect time of year to interact with farmers. The markets are in full swing, the deliveries are flowing, the sun is out and the heat of the afternoon provides an excuse to lay off the work for awhile and chat. After the wagon is unloaded of course…

Pictured – Julian Wooten (left) from Southwest Berry Farm and Trace Ramsey from Tidal Creek Cooperative Food Market. Photo by Jessica Ashcraft.