Several members of our Serendipity Sunday School class from Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church in Birmingham came to see us at the farm Saturday. We had a great visit, but that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the discovery one of our class members made. I was showing off the orchard to a small group. At one point our friend Lara Waits stopped and said, “That looks like food!” I hadn’t told her, but she was standing on the spot where we had piled our compost for several months during the winter. What she had spotted, we think, are either squash, zucchini, cucumber, or melon plants growing voluntarily from their seeds in the compost.

Later in the day, knowing what we had discovered up the hill, when we walked past a newer compost pile, we found three or four more happy pioneers reaching for daylight, again most likely some kind of squash or zucchini. Amanda has tenderly extracted them already and given them growing room (and plentiful sunshine) on Veg Hill.

It’s always possible that these plants we’ve found are from hybrids and that they will not reproduce true to type. That is, we could end up with a zucchini that is tasteless or doesn’t even set fruit. On the other hand, most of what we grew last year was open pollinated varieties, so we’re guardedly optimistic. Can’t wait to see what develops!

The video runs a little more than two minutes.