Did You Hear? We are now officially… Farmers!

Yep. Farmers.

Of what?

Luffa. Loofah. Luffah.

I know I’ve posted a little about these organic sponges that you can grow, but over the years we were perfecting them. And, this year, we got the best crop. Hopefully next year, we will harvest the best ever since we’ve been isolating the seeds from the best gourds.

So our first product are “slices” of luffa, in a 5-pack bag and Eric is currently on his way to Michigan to sell them at market night… more of a “test run.”

So yesterday I took some product shots…

If these sell, I will probably print out some better labels. Currently, I simply printed off on our laser printer so a little bland…

Here’s a closeup of the label so you can see product info…

And then Eric came up with a brilliant idea while I was shooting these on our porch… “Why don’t you hang it from the actual Luffa vine?” He’s brilliant…

That is an actual luffa behind the package on the left that has not ripened yet. When it turns really light green and develops lots of brown “splotches” all over… it’s ready to pick.

I’ve been so happy with our crop this season… and they are still producing it’s beautiful yellow flowers as well (you can see a small bloom in photo above).

We started a garden when we first moved here to middle Tennessee 5 years ago… tomatoes, peppers, spinach, all the herbs, etc. But I gravitated more to the luffa that we first thought were cucumbers—Someone at our local farmer’s market mixed up her plants but it was a happy mistake. They grew so large that it just couldn’t be a cucumber and after some online research, I discovered they were in fact luffas. And we both educated ourselves on how to harvest these extremely useful sponges.

This year, we grew a few herbs and then only luffa. That was it.

Now don’t get me wrong… we are not going to get wealthy from Luffa! It’s just become an enjoyment for me to grow, and for Eric to harvest and it’s such a great sponge for so many uses… from general cleaning, or as a skin exfoliator to a basket wood burnisher…. We want other people to see why we love luffa so much. And it’s all organic. When you’re done with it, just toss it in your garden! You can’t do that with those “un-recyclable” commercial sponges people buy…

So if you’re at the Michigan convention, Eric will have about a dozen of these… selling at $5 per bag.

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