Don’t get me wrong – Bee Heaven’s stand at the Pinecrest market is always pretty nice. But this past weekend, it was a new level of abundance.

In the picture above, Margie is holding a slice of calabaza. The squash itself was huge, pushing thirty pounds. You can see a picture of it on the farm scale over at Marion’s blog, redland rambles.

This was also the first week we brought carrots to market, riotously colored in yellow, white, purple, and orange. The weirdo colored ones are growing quite well – surprisingly, the white ones lead the pack in terms of size and vigor. I’ve never seen the specialty carrots do that well up north. I was the lucky one who got the harvest task of collecting and washing them. There’s nothing quite like pulling a nice carrot. The firm tug, the dramatic reveal, a blip of color in a sea of green fronds. Especially gratifying after many hours of tedious weeding in December.

There was lots of fruit as well – perfectly ripe canistels, green baskets of strawberries, a wooden box of passionfruit, soft black sapote. It’s a good thing lots of people showed up. Sunday is a long day, and I was not keen on the idea of loading full crates back onto the box truck in the afternoon.

It was also the first market of the season that involved a serious amount of heirloom tomatoes, and despite all the other flashy offerings the tomatoes were probably the darling of the ball. Not shocking. I guess there’s nothing quite like a real tomato, especially when it’s been a while since you had your last one.