My two elder brothers and I went to farm today for the harvesting of our cucumber. My mother told us yesterday at home when she came back from the farm in the evening that our cucumber is ready for harvesting. She told us we should better go and harvests it before thieves does their own. This farming period once your farm produces is ready for harvesting better go and harvest it when is due if not you will be surprised thieves will go and stéal your farm produces at the farm and got free. Yes, most times they will steal people's farm produces and got free because they will not be caught. And when such happened you will be wondering how comes, what time they stole your farm produces.
This farming period is a dangerous period for farmers as well because their farm produces aren't safe from thieves or even herdsmen or Fulani people leaving their cows to destroy and graze on people's farm produces when farmers are not at the farm. So, this morning when we got the farm, the saw the cucumbers looking fresh and big. We starting working, gathering them one by one and in a particular place, like grouping it group by group before parking them to a particular place and park it inside bags and package it. Well,we all know this farm had been producing cucumbers for the past three years now, the land is fertile and we used to plant groundnuts and cucumbers in the farm.
The land was given to my mother by one of her distance brother who had been farming it for a very long time before he told my mother to be farming groundnut and cucumbers in the farm since he will relocate to Keffi. That he will not have time to be farming it here again since he will stay in Keffi permanently. The land is a fertile land for cucumbers and groundnuts indeed, because even my mother told us that her brother said if she plant maize, corn, or any farm produces that's not cucumbers or groundnuts it will not yield good for harvesting. My mother said she once planted maize and mix with guinea corn together with cucumbers at the beginning but that maize and corn didn't produced well but cucumbers geminate well and yield good fruits. Since then she only plant groundnut and cucumbers in this farm, but she still have other farm that she plant other farm produces like maize and corn and rice.
While we were harvesting the cucumbers, at first I thought is a small farm work we will do but getting there and has been two hours we are not yet done with harvesting the cucumbers. I was so tired and exhausted and complaint to my brothers am tired and needed to rest. My body was paining me especially my hands was hurt and injured a little.
This particular type of cucumbers have small small thorns on them that will be choking my hands if am plugging them. The cucumbers are looking good, big and very long in size . Farming enough cucumbers like this is not for family consumption but for marketing and business purposes.
What are we going to do with all this cucumbers if we are to keep or store them at home without selling them. We will just keep few that we will eat, use some cook rice and slide into the food and make use of some with salad.
This particular cucumbers takes 60 days to grow and matured for harvesting. Some people will come to our house and buy it in a small quality for their personal usage. Some people eat it raw and other used it with salads. But when we take it to the market, some people will buy it in a large qualities, and even those people cooking in a hotel will come and patronize the cucumbers in a large qualities.
I believed those people that bought it both in small and large qualities knows the significant and advantage of cucumbers in their body when eaten or making salads and sandwich in a big hotels or restaurant that people will patronize their food.
For the past three years we have been farming this particular farm for groundnuts and cucumbers. The cucumbers doesn't take long time before getting ripe like groundnut does. After planting the cucumbers within 60 days it will be ready for harvesting, we will harvest it leaving the groundnuts in the farm yet to be harvested
I was told medically that cucumbers contain some vitamins like vitamin K and C. And it's helps to prevent one from losing water in the body system since the cucumbers is mostly contained purely water. And some people bought it in a very large qualities because they used to produce some herbal medicine with the cucumbers extracts. Am sure cucumbers have a lot of medical advantage that makes people to buy it and to be eating it regularly. Not to talk about how to manage your weight, cucumbers does a lot of hidden works that can not be overemphasize. When we were gathering the cucumbers, I sat down in a big tree shield telling my elder brothers am tired I won't be able to work again. They told me to stand up and work along with them so we could go home fast.
Despite being exhausted we all worked and gather cucumbers three and half bags of cucumbers from the farm and took them home. It wasn't easy but we did it and have upto four bags of cucumbers this year. Last year I remembered we had only two bags of cucumbers but this year is almost four bags. That shows we are making progress, the cucumbers farm has increased and yield more than last year harvest.