Farm News

News from the Farm | March 2, 2026

March 2, 2026

Photo Credit Ella Galaty

This weekend I caught up on the phone with a friend who asked if it felt like spring yet. It was in the mid-70s on Thursday through Sunday, so the answer was an easy yes. But that’s not all – we’ve got abundant flowers and fuzzy lambs, to say nothing of the first spears of asparagus, blossoming apricot trees, almond and quince trees sprouting leaves, plus wildflowers showing up in the surrounding hills.

A glass vase of tulips with several tulips of different colors

First, the tulips. The tulips were planted in November and now they’re here and are in bloom. And they’re beautiful! Anyone who isn’t getting them is missing out! It’s fascinating to watch them open in a vase over the course of days, or even over a few hours if they’re in a particularly warm or sunny spot. 

Hannah holding a bunch of tulips in her left hand and adding one more with her right.

Harvesting tulips over the past two weeks in the rain, or in between the rain, has been a muddy affair, but the timing of harvest is important. We need to harvest before the flower opens so that each stem will be in bloom in your houses for the longest time possible. We pull the whole thing, bulb and all, from the ground, and we don’t save tulip bulbs between years. We can’t leave the bulbs in the ground – gopher predation and the bulbs need to be chilled pre-planting to get an even bloom. Even if we did save them, the old bulbs may not produce a flower and the stems might be short. That being said, we sometimes still end up with short tulips from new bulbs. So we compost the old bulbs and buy and plant a new set each year. The flower team has also been harvesting some stunning anemones!

As for the lambs, we’re still waiting on a few ewes but most have given birth and we have over 160 lambs. This includes three “bummer lambs,” the term for orphaned or rejected lambs that need bottle-feeding. They’re currently being cared for by Rye and Becca’s family, and no exaggeration, the whole family is involved, from their youngest, Juno, to the family dog, Soba. Soba and the “driveway bummers” have formed quite the bond. They follow him everywhere and he faithfully guards them. These bummer lambs will rejoin the rest of the group in May. Thanks to Becca for the photos!

Young child in a green shirt bottlefeeding a lamb
Two brown lambs with a large white dog
Two brown lambs approaching a large white fluffy dog
Three brown lambs and one large white dog

Lastly, we’re all very excited for next week’s release of Full Belly: Recipes and Stories from a Family Farm. Amon and Jenna have several events planed to celebrate the release of the book, and not all of them require a trip up to the farm, which can be a bit of a trek for some folks in our community. See below and our Events Calendar for more information. 

Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager

News from the Farm | February 23, 2026

February 23, 2026

Paul at the Palo Alto Farmers Market

For the past 42 or so years, Saturday mornings have been market mornings. Early on, when Dru and I were just getting the farm started, we rented 12 acres of good land near Woodland – just west of Sacramento -12 acres from a family of retiring Filipino farmers. We were committed to organic production from the start, borrowed $10,000 to buy our first tractor, and looked for a crop that could clearly be grown in a way that customers would taste a difference. One of our first crops on the journey to growing a farm was Silver Queen sweet corn. 

42 years ago, there were but a smattering of farmers markets around the state. To sell fresh-picked sweet corn directly to cash paying customers was a whole new world of farming that seemingly had been forgotten. We heard of a new market in Palo Alto. It was just starting and was far enough away from our other fledgling farmer friends to not compete with them at closer markets. We were committed to the Palo Alto market from the start. A Saturday morning fixture, rain or shine. The 140-mile drive split the distance to Dru’s Mom’s house in San Jose so that a visit and a helping hand at the market seemed a “two-fer.”

We started those early Saturday mornings in June, July, August and September by 3am, heading to the corn field- maybe an acre or so planted 12 times over to ripen in successive weeks. There in the dark, we begin picking. Dru and I would don headlamps, wipe away pollen, wet sticky dust, dew, spider webs and sharp corn leaves and fill a small Chevy LUV pickup with Silver Queen corn. At that time, we had our first child, Amon. When we finished harvesting, we would change a diaper and then head down the highway to Palo Alto. We arrived two hours later, streaked in dirt and pollen and then sold, with all sincerity, the best corn that anyone there had ever tasted. A two-hour drive would reap a reward of maybe $800 cash. We felt as though we were walking our pathway to self-reliance.

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News from the Farm | February 16, 2026

February 16, 2026

The CSA Packing Assembly Line

This is CSA Week, a week for celebrating CSAs and encouraging people to join one. Our CSA is open to join at any point, but for farms with a shorter, more distinct farming season, it’s a key time to focus on advertising and signing people up. I encourage anyone who is interested to try out our CSA, or a CSA that’s close to you, if not in the area. And encourage your friends, family, and coworkers.

That being said, CSAs aren’t right for everyone. For years, I’ve thought about the idea of “CSA people” a term used by some UC Davis CSA researchers (who I worked with in college!) to describe people who are “willing to subject their preferences to a single, farm-based market outlet directly tied to the seasons.” Which means: 1) eating what is seasonally available 2) lack of choice in selection 3) cooking with whole ingredients (and all that that entails – including time and equipment) 4) having to get your produce somewhere else from the rest of your food 5) paying in advance.

All five of these conditions run counter to today’s food system, which is built around year-round availability to everything, the idea that more choice leads to higher satisfaction, processed food, and less time and money for food purchasing and preparation. So being in a CSA is a somewhat radical act, not just an agricultural one (as Wendell Berry describes it)! 

Those researchers have a more positive way to define this group of people! “CSA people enjoy food-related activities, have value systems that prioritize collective benefits of CSA in addition to personal ones, experience lack of produce choice positively, have regular monetary reserves for pre-payment, and can allocate sufficient household labor to cooking from scratch and learning how to cook novel produce.” This is true of our members. We did a big survey in 2024, and many people reported that they liked not needing to make choices about their produce. In a world filled with so many daily decisions, they appreciate the respite. They liked “reliably high-quality produce,” exposure to new things, and the element of surprise that comes with each box.

Some 2025 CSA Boxes

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News from the Farm | February 9, 2026

February 9, 2026

So many exciting things from last week! It was a team effort to document all of them!

First, as promised in last week’s Beet, some photos of the new lambs. Thanks for the photos Becca!

They’re very impressive in addition to being adorable. Mere minutes after being born, the lambs are hard at work trying to stand up on their four (very wobbly) legs and after a few attempts, manage this herculean feat! As of 10:30am this Monday, we’re at 100 lambs, including 18 sets of triplets and two quadruplets!

Amon and Jenna’s cookbook is a month away from publication, but they’ve gotten an advance copy to peruse. It’s a stunning book, to say nothing of the lovely essays and headnotes with each recipe, plus the recipes themselves! You can see some of the interior pages here. You can preorder a book now through your favorite bookstore here, and after the publication date on March 10, you can get signed copies directly from us! We’ll be selling signed copies in our CSA Member Store, Online Farm Shop (for shipping), and at events. 

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News from the Farm | February 2, 2026

February 2, 2026

What happened last week?

The biggest news of the week was the birth of Georgia Schoenig on Monday, and everyone is healthy and doing well! Congratulations to Hannah and Elliot, and the rest of the Muller and Schoenig families!

Georgia isn’t the only new member of the Full Belly community. Our first lambs of the year (twins!) were born on Wednesday morning. As of Monday morning at 10:22am (it’s changing fast), the count is up to 30 adorable, fluffy lambs, a combination of twins, triplets, a few single births, and one quadruplet (so far). Lamb photos to come in future weeks.

We got a minuscule amount of rain on Tuesday, nothing substantial. The irrigation team has gotten back to setting up and moving irrigation pipes and we’re checking the weather forecast for future precipitation. We need more rain! Meanwhile, the first of the apriums are blooming (in the top photo) and the almonds aren’t far behind. Reminder: join us for the annual Almond Festival on Sunday, February 22. We’ll be in Rumsey with a farmers market stand and we’ll be making food.

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News from the Farm | January 26, 2026

January 26, 2026

One of last week’s CSA boxes

Last week, a contingent of Full Belly folks, including myself, headed to the annual EcoFarm Conference. A big thanks to Rye, Amon, and the rest of the team who kept things running while several of us were away. This conference focuses on regenerative agriculture, ecological stewardship, food justice, and making a more sustainable and just food system. As has happened since 1981, a wide group of attendees (not just farmers) assembled to hear about an equally wide number of topics, with plenty of time on the side to meet new people and catch up with old friends. Paul facilitated a Real Organic Project Roundtable Discussion, Dru did a wreath workshop, I was a panelist for a session on CSAs, and we had an expo booth where we talked about the farm and sold some of our products. 

I appreciated hearing the thoughts and reflections of the three farmers chosen for the “Successful Farmer” keynote, which they joked should be called the “Surviving Farmer” panel. And I’m still mulling over the discussion/debate between Leonard Diggs and Tom Willey, both long-time friends of the farm, about community-based farming versus commodity-based farming. See the photo of the summary between these two systems, though the discussion went much deeper, covering the history, the current situation, and the two speakers’ different images of what community-based farming future requires. 

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News from the Farm | January 19, 2026

January 19, 2026

We’re used to temperature shifts of 30-40 degrees during the course of a day, but I usually associate that with summer, not winter. But that was our weather last week: lows in the low 30s with highs in the mid-60s, even breaking 70 on Saturday! This requires some masterful layering to be comfortable throughout the day, and depending on how low the temperature goes, some adjustments to our normal routine. If it’s below freezing at the start of the day, we have to wait to harvest most crops until it warms up.

Note: all the photos here were taken after it had warmed up! 

Usually we get our first frost around the second week of November. This year it came seven weeks later, after New Year’s day. We appreciate the cold weather. This frost kills off our summer crops (peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes) that otherwise will slowly keep producing. We still had some peppers and eggplant on Thanksgiving! While the plants weren’t dead, we mowed them and planted cover crops in those fields before our break and the rain. Cold weather makes our root vegetables and leafy greens much sweeter; you can really taste it in the carrots. The frost also kills pests, both insects and summer weeds.

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News from the Farm | January 12, 2026

January 12, 2026

After four weeks off, over seven inches of rain, finally a bit of sun after weeks of fog, and some much needed time off, we’re back from our winter break and ready to get back to farming! Welcome back to returning CSA members, and welcome to the many new folks joining our community.

There are many reasons to join a CSA but one key reason is a close connection to your food and knowing where it comes from, who grows it, and how it was grown. The other is enjoying tasty, fresh, nutritious produce. Our main way of helping you with these goals is via our newsletter, the Beet. You can sign up to get the Beet sent to you every Monday – there’s a link at the bottom of the home page. The Beet tells you what the Tuesday CSA members are getting, provides recipe ideas and storage tips, and has the “News from the Farm” section with notes and photos about what we’re up to. Plus other announcements. We also have a website with hundreds of recipes categorized by produce type, plus over 14 years of farm news to peruse. 

But we’ve been farming for longer than that! Full Belly Farm was started in 1984 and certified organic in 1985. That’s over forty years of organic farming! We’re also certified by the Real Organic Project (more about that here). 

We’re located on about 350 acres in the stunningly beautiful Capay Valley, between Guinda and Rumsey (map here). For reference, one acre is almost one football field, 16 tennis courts, or nine basketball courts. We’d love for you to come up and visit during one of our many events: our annual spring CSA Day, one of our summer monthly Friday night Pizza Nights, a Farm Dinner, or one of our other special events. We’ll be announcing Farm Dinner dates within the next month or so, and CSA members and Beet readers hear about them first, so always make sure to read the Beet!

We’re an incredibly diverse farm. We’re growing hundreds of varieties of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, plus nuts (almonds and walnuts), grains (wheat, barley, and corn), and oil crops (olives and safflower). We also raise sheep, chickens, cows, and pigs and sell eggs, meat (seasonally), yarn, and sheepskins. We have a certified kitchen where we dry fruit and make jam, baked goods, and more. All items from the kitchen are made with produce (or flour) that we grow and all items can be added to your CSA boxes! We recommend that you peruse the web store from time to time, but we also send out emails about extra items.

How do we manage this incredible diversity? It starts with good leadership! We have seven owners (from left to right in the photo below): Amon Muller, Jenna Muller, Paul Muller, Dru Rivers, Hannah Muller, Andrew Brait, and Rye Muller. Each has their own area of the business that they’re in charge of. It’s a true (multigenerational) family farm: Amon, Hannah, and Rye are Dru and Paul’s children, and Jenna is Amon’s wife.

Photo Credit: Ella Gallaty

In addition, we’ve got about 65 year-round employees (see the photo of us on top) plus more folks who join us during the summer. Some of my coworkers have been working here for 30+ years! Everything is a true team effort and everything you get reflects the hard and careful work of countless people from seed to delivery, and the many steps in between.

In addition to our CSA, we attend three farmers markets each week (the Tuesday Berkeley Farmers Market, Thursday Marin Civic Center Market, and Saturday Palo Alto Market), we sell to small grocery stores plus bakeries and restaurants, primarily in the San Francisco Bay area and Sacramento/Davis areas, and sell to a couple large wholesalers. 

That just scratches the surface, but it addresses some of the most common questions we’re asked. What are some questions that you have about our farm? Let me know and I can answer it in an upcoming Beet.

A few reminders:

ALWAYS check the sign-out sheet before you take a box, flowers, or anything else. Don’t take anything that isn’t listed with your name. It’s frustrating and disappointing when someone arrives to find out that their items aren’t there. If your name isn’t on the list, reach out to me in the office (email or phone) and we’ll figure it out.

Everyone has the ability to skip or donate a box if they’re going to be gone. The cutoff to let us know is two full days before your delivery date (i.e. Saturday night cutoff for a Tuesday box). Skipping or donating via the CSA website is easy to do, or you can email. Skipped boxes are moved to the end of your schedule, unless you request otherwise.

If you can, consider donating a box instead of skipping. Thanks to CSA member generosity, last year we donated five boxes each week to the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic and subsidized $5,000 of CSA payments for your fellow CSA members. 

Lastly, don’t be a stranger! If you have feedback (positive or “constructive”), a recipe to share, or a question for us, please reach out! We believe very strongly in the Community part of Community Supported Agriculture and want this exchange to be more than a transactional money-for-produce exchange. We’re real people, growing real food, and we appreciate the relationship we have with all of you.

Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager

News from the Farm | December 8, 2025

December 8, 2025

The passing of a year seems more of a blur in retrospect that becomes more difficult to recall as I get on in years. We are nearing the end of another full year’s cycle, becoming our 42nd here at this farm between the Capay Hills and the Blue Ridge Mountains. As winter solstice now creeps towards us with delightfully long nights, our farm rhythm shifts. We start work later, finish earlier, sleep longer, sip more tea, and find time to enjoy the clear, starry skies. 

In most Native American societies, months are marked by moons and the natural world’s turning during that month. December brings the “cold winter moon,” and this year, the Blue Moon of early December. As moon names vary among Native peoples, we might give our own names to December moons- like “migrating geese overhead” moon, or “wood fire” moon, or “time to read, sing, and rest a bit” moon, or even “banker’s hours” moon. This December moon is indeed our time to gather in the strength to do it all over again- the “mustering strength” moon. 

Solstice comes with a bit of sadness though, knowing that with its turn, days begin again to lengthen, stirring renewed enthusiasm for planting, rousing the ideas sown in December’s long dark nights by making plans for action. It is as inescapable as the urges of bees to sunlight driving the quest for pollen and nectar – take flight, feed the brood, plant and harvest, a new tug on a farmer’s spirit is coming… Yet now, when  it comes to pure time needed to regenerate ourselves, we are finding that we need a couple of Decembers. 

During these dark long nights, we have, for years, celebrated solstice with a party. There is a potluck for the neighborhood, singing to fill souls with songs remembered and sung together. We dabble in the folk wisdom of Wassail as revelers, surrounding our fruit trees or vines in a cold dark night with noise making tools (pots and pans, horns or hoots) to remind our trees not to sleep too deeply and to awaken together in January to begin another fruitful year. (Or maybe it is just fun to raise cacophony for a moment on the longest night of the year.) 

Looking back, 2025 may be one of the most benign and wonderful years of any in the past 42 here. The combination of gentle well-spaced rains, mild temperatures, fruitfulness, a good plan, and a dedicated crew helped to make one of our best years ever. Crops were generally beautiful- we were cared for once again by this generous land.  The native people who lived here long before we arrived knew the good fortune of this place. Perhaps understanding clearly that this year’s fullness may be followed by challenges and scarcity. It is remarkable how few acorns the oaks held this year, perhaps portending a season of hunger for those who lived with the bounty or limitations of place. So for this year, it seems that our guardian angels smiled upon us and blessed us again with abundance. 

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News from the Farm | December 1, 2025

December 1, 2025

Check out the steam coming from that compost pile as it was being turned!

This weekend I read an email newsletter that included this reflection about the value of Thanksgiving: “It’s good to be thankful. It’s good to have a day to think about gratitude. It’s good to have a day to be together with whomever you want to be with…” Those words have stuck with me, plus the end of each season often causes me to reflect on all that we’ve accomplished during the year and all the gratitude and appreciation I feel.

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News from the Farm | November 24, 2025

November 24, 2025

Where to start this Thanksgiving week Beet? So many threads to weave into the fabric of thankfulness here. 2025 has been a remarkable year of bounty and benign weather. Our rains have been plentiful and gentle. The community of hands here – some 80 year-round workers – have been connected through a common task of creating fruitfulness and manifest abundance.

Migrating birds, bats, insects, and friends have stopped by this year, generally filling their bellies before flying on. The soil seems richer, smelling funky and sweet. Cover crops radiate vibrancy, complexity and lushness. The cultivated crops strikingly green and lush provide us with sweet abundance. The dynamic whole – this land, the people, the life above and below – is reflecting a community that is expressing its love for life.  It has been our work, both hopeful and beautiful, to grow a place more complex and remarkable each year. 

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News from the Farm | November 17, 2025

November 17, 2025

We think of the cooler months being a quieter, slower time. That was not the case last week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were spent trying to get as much done as possible before it rained. Thursday and Friday (especially Thursday when it was raining hard) were all about getting the harvest done as quickly as possible so folks could get home and get out of the rain and mud.

Amid all the rush and bustle, I did get a few pictures to capture some of that activity:

Paul planting winter cover crop seed after the sun dipped below the hills in the field that was the Hoes Down sudan grass maze. That’s why tractors have headlights! The grain drill was in almost constant use last week getting this very important crop planted. Learn more about cover crops and why we plant them here. 

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News from the Farm | November 10, 2025

November 10, 2025

For years, the farm has hosted school groups for field trips. After taking a break during COVID, we renewed our commitment to farm education in 2023 and have hosted a handful of schools and educational groups every year since. Whether the visit is for a few days or just for a few hours, we ingrain the young students into the farm’s rhythm and aim to make their first experience with agriculture a memorable one. At the end of the trip, you see their eyes light up when they talk about eating the juiciest strawberry they have ever had, packing 200 CSA boxes with their classmates, harvesting garlic for the farmers market and feeding compost to hungry piglets.

This year, we have been lucky to be front and center in the growing “Farm-to-School” movement—an effort to get local, fresh, and seasonal ingredients into school cafeterias. Just last week, we worked with two inspiring organizations that are transforming school lunch culture and building stronger bridges between farms and schools.

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News from the Farm | November 3, 2025

November 3, 2025

This past Wednesday was our first olive harvest of the year. And what a day! The team of twelve harvesters got about 11.5 tons (23,000 pounds) of olives to press into olive oil. 

How do we know when it’s time to harvest olives? We’re balancing flavor and yield to get a flavorful oil with a decent amount of oil per ton of olives harvested. Green, less ripe olives yield less oil but have a stronger flavor (more polyphenols). Mature, dark olives yield more oil but have a milder taste. On Wednesday, we picked Leccino olives and Picual. The Leccino were more ripe, the Picual were more green. Oil yield varies significantly between varieties, and is also influenced by ripeness, moisture, and extraction processed. We generally expect around 30 gallons of oil per ton. 

We normally harvest olives by hand, using little rakes to comb the fruit off the trees. It’s an all hands on deck effort. You can see a video of it here. Last week, we did a modified machine harvest, which we trialed last year and found that it worked relatively well. We used the shaker that we use for almond and walnut harvesting to shake the trees, while a few folks whacked the trees with poles (another common olive harvest method). Fortunately, Andrew captured a video of the process!

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News from the Farm | October 27, 2025

October 27, 2025

What happened last week?

Rye and a hardworking crew planted next year’s strawberries on Thursday, 13,000 plants in total, all by hand. We had an amazing strawberry crop this past spring and we hope these humble looking crowns will do just as well, if not better!

After planting the crowns, the most important final step is to make sure that the irrigation lines are correctly set up to keep these plants hydrated and happy.

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News from the Farm | October 20, 2025

October 20, 2025

It’s fall and things are falling! 

We got almost two inches of rain last Monday afternoon through Wednesday morning!

Temperatures have fallen too. Last week got a little cold, even into the high 40s at night. The remaining summer crops in the field don’t look too happy.

Then there’s the walnuts and tomatoes. Lots happening, some of which is captured in this video:

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News from the Farm | October 13, 2025

October 13, 2025

Big news from the Full Belly Farm Kitchen: We wrote a cookbook!

Wow, I think it may have been 10 years or more since you last heard from us in these pages. A lot has happened! We have three beautiful children who are or are about to enter their teen years, a new farm dog, and in 2015 we moved into our Farm Kitchen. Perhaps you have been out to the farm for a pizza night, a farm dinner, Hoes Down, or an open farm day visit in the past and have seen this space for yourself. In case you have not, it is a big redwood building that looks like a grand old barn with a water tower on the side. The landscaping has grown up along with us, and there are vines of jasmine and wisteria climbing the walls. We have butterfly bushes, vitex, native grasses, and big trees that provide much needed shade in the summer months. There is a big lawn out front that has been danced on by thousands of feet, and witnessed many, many happy occasions and gatherings of friends and family.

Over the years we always had a secret dream of writing a cookbook. People would ask us when that was happening, and we demurred ~ feeling too overwhelmed with the busyness of raising young kids and keeping a business going all at the same time. We never knew how it could fit into our daily to do list that was already too long. At the same time, we kept plugging away at our farm dinner series, creating new recipes and testing them out on our guests. After so many years, we realized we had quite a compilation. At one of our dinners about two years back, Hannah’s book agent and her photographer were guests. At the end of the evening, they pointedly asked, “So, when are you going to do YOUR book?” We both said, “Let’s go for it.” 

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News from the Farm | October 6, 2025

October 6, 2025

We are all a little blurry-eyed this Monday morning as we wander around the farm, picking up tables, hay bales, scarecrows, pumpkins, and misplaced items. This weekend’s Hoes Down Harvest Festival has come to an end, and in its wake, there are a multitude of things that must be cleaned and organized and a multitude of people to thank. We farmers are exhausted, but incredibly thankful, feeling a new surge of energy to keep farming for the most amazing community.

Over the last four days we have had over 350 volunteers help construct stages, move tables, hang lights, decorate the farm with corn stalks and pumpkins, chop vegetables, direct parking, and more. As guests arrived on Saturday, they were greeted by a beautified farm ready to host over 2,000 guests for the day. The straw road and welcome sign led guests to a farmers market filled with local goodies, craft vendors selling incredible wares, a silent auction with over 100 donated items, close to 20 workshops throughout the day, stages filled with music and games, and a Children’s Area bursting with activities for all ages. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who gave their time and expertise and volunteered.

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News from the Farm | September 29, 2025

September 29, 2025

Photo credit: Ella Galaty 

At the turn of the month, us Full Belly flower farmers are transitioning our flower power from fresh to dried bouquets and arrangements. Therefore, these are our final days of fresh, cut flower sales, and we want to thank you for enjoying these buds and blossoms with us all season long. 

This year, we grew approximately 15 acres of flowers partitioned across four fields. To inform new readers and remind our seasoned ones, we parade in and out of these fields with the change of the seasons, picking over 50 varieties of flowers from early February to late October. Some of my personal favorites from this year were our early spring Apricot Pride tulips, late spring rudbeckia and feverfew, shoulder crop of statice, and summer marigolds. Under good leadership and managed by skilled hands, these flower fields have adorned the heart of the farm. 

Photos left to right: Early spring, late spring and summer flower fields 

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News from the Farm | September 22, 2025

September 22, 2025

Slicing into a ripe Piel de Sapo melon this morning, I realized that I was a victim of seduction. As with so many of the plant families here, seeds were spilling out of the incision, the fruits are a mere vessel for the “go forth and multiply” maxim of a plant’s directive for sustainability. Inside each of the plump elongated seeds in its melon heart was a whole encyclopedia of heredity, selection, replicability and future potential. 

The thousands of seeds in that single melon represent the story of millennia of choosing. The Piel de Sapo (“skin of the toad” in Spanish) is an international favorite grown throughout the world. It is also known as a Santa Claus Melon, Christmas melon, or Croc melon (in Australia), and has a history that dates to Roman times. These melons were brought into southern Spain as early as 300 BCE and were prevalent in Roman horticultural manuals. Piel de Capos were also brought to Spain by the Arabs and were listed in several documents written by Arab botanist and agronomist Ibn Bassal around 1080. Allegedly, the Spanish would say “he who fills his stomach with melons will be filled with light,” and unsurprisingly, these melons became an important crop in this area.

In addition to their amazing taste, these melons are good for us. They are sources of vitamin C (immune system), vitamin A (growth, vision, and cell function), magnesium (nerve function), potassium (heart health and blood pressure), phosphorus (kidney function), calcium (bones and teeth), and other nutrients. What a nutritional bargain!

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