Luffas are Squashes

Have you ever used a luffa sponge? Well guess what, they are squashes, and they grow here.

The luffa plant is a vine squash that crawls out and produces these fantastic long squashes that can be eaten as vegetables before they are mature, or picked when they are bright yellow and losing their weight. At this point, you let them dry and peal them, shake out some seeds, and soak the squash in bleach water for a few days. Then, you dry it again for a great big luffa sponge. The rest of the seeds usually fall out with the final drying.

Lauren made some soap yesterday evening. The soap is a lovely orange color, and Eric sprinkled rosemary leaves on top. They filled their soap making box while it was still liquid, then wrapped wax paper and plastic rap snugly about a luffa and filled it too. This we are calling "luffa soap." When they soap has finished curing in a few weeks, we'll cut the soap-filled luffa into rounds, making round bars of soap with a built in luffa scrubby.

As for other happenings on the farm, we have another stage of irrigation set up, all the of the planting beds fertilized that we could (still have a few that have not been tilled and raised), transplanted some volunteer nasturtiums, ripened a batch of plantains, transplanted some chives for the third time, continued the harvest of star fruits, began knitting my first real sweater, finished all of the tomato transplants, watched the Arugula pop their little heads up, and other sundry events. Also, I baked my first loaf of bread, which was naturally a big hit.