According to the Good Book, “Look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” And: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few.”
My field is literally white — covered with basketball-sized gourds among a tangle of green vines.
And the labourers are indeed few — namely me.
I suppose I have one of the more unorthodox farms in southwest Mississippi. While my primary focus is commonplace — pine trees — I’ve got a healthy crop of gourds, plus a promising stand of banana trees.
Now harvest time is here, and I’ve been busy.
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This all started in February when I did an article on purple martins and John Ard of Jayess gave me some gourd seeds. He told me to plant them in a burn pile, which I did.
I figured they might cover the pile if I was lucky. Instead they blanketed the whole food plot and climbed trees and bushes, producing hundreds of gourds.
Before Halloween I picked a bunch, and Angelyn decorated them with faces drawn with colorful magic markers. She thus started a new Halloween tradition at our place — decorative gourds — as well as Thanksgiving and general yard art.
A family in our church decided to try them out and decorated a bunch for Halloween as well.
Meanwhile I found more friends here and there who wanted some, either for martin houses or for decoration.
Every so often for weeks now I’ve been picking a load of 15 or 20, all my side-by-side will hold.
The first frost of the season the other night wilted about half the vines but didn’t hurt the gourds, so I guess I’ll continue to pick them for whoever wants them.
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As for bananas, that started last year when Pat McCullough of Ruth thinned his stand and let me dig up a number of 15-foot trees, which I hauled home in the bed of my long-wheel-base pickup truck and set out in the burn pile.
Pat advised me not to cut them back in the winter, as the leaves would most likely keep the trees from dying. In the spring, trim back the dead leaves and the stalk down to the green part, and they should bear fruit.
Unfortunately, a 14-degree night this past February killed the trees to the ground. Nevertheless, new shoots sprang up and have grown 20 to 30 feet.
I even found a bunch of green bananas among the leaves recently.
Fearing a frost might ruin them, I asked Pat when I should pick them.
“The question is, how are you going to extend summer/fall until they mature?” he quipped.
In other words, wait and hope the cold weather doesn’t damage the young bananas before they ripen.
He added, “I don’t know of any that I have given (away) over the years that have done this good in their first year.”
That was encouraging. I attribute it to that rich burn-pile dirt, which has proved good for both gourds and bananas.
I’ll never compete with commercial bananas, and will be lucky just to get some for home consumption, whether this year or next.
As for the gourds, as long as Angelyn keeps decorating them and people keep requesting some, I’ll guess I’ll keep harvesting.
