Organic Haifa’s Finest Zucchini

Description

Where do we begin? The flavor, the story, the abundance or the near spinelessness?

If you don’t have time for it all, know this: We are so thankful for the countless generations of humans and plants co-evolving to lay the foundation for Fruition to collaborate with a regional organic farm and land-grant university to co-create the most flavorful zucchini we’ve ever eaten. Imagine exceptional nuttiness with a creamy density that melts in your mouth — you won’t be tossing these in neighbor’s mailboxes, we suspect.

If you’re ready for the long story, I love you and rewind over half a century. Our friends Zaid and Haifa grew up in Palestine and Jordan, obsessed with food, taking for granted the exquisitely flavorful vegetables they were surrounded with. Central to so many Middle Eastern dishes are the shorter, lime green, exquisitely nutty ‘cousa’-style zucchini and when they came to the United States, Zaid and Haifa were blown away that Americans think of zucchini as long, dark green and quite flavorless.

In 1998, they founded Norwich Meadows Farm here in Upstate New York and today grow over one hundred acres of organic vegetables. (Yes, they’re amazing!) They’ve trialed many different varieties of cousa-style zucchini across the years and one has the best balance of productivity and flavor they’ve found: an F1 Hybrid called Magda. Fast forward to 2013: The seed company offering Magda announces they’re dropping the variety. Zaid and Haifa then discover that company is the only source of the seed. They promptly buy all the seed they can and asked Fruition to de-hybridize, to untangle, to save its seed and create a new open-pollinated variety they can rely on. We said yes 🙂

Six years and six generations later, we’re honored to share our exquisitely delicious, early, uniform and nearly spineless selection that we call Haifa’s Finest, in honor of the matron of Norwich Meadows who has prepared, enjoyed, shared and grown countless thousands of the most delicious cousa zucchini on the planet — and helped us select this one — and it is an honor to share this seed, finally, with you. Enjoy our video about Haifa’s Finest below, as well. For more stories and tutorials like this delivered straight to your inbox, sign up here!

Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,

& the whole Fruition Crew