I grow melons because they make people happy.
"Drop the melon. Let's hear it crunch. Really. Go ahead. It's OK. Drop it now."
My instructions to farm visitors
Melon tourism is a thing.
Most people like melons. Watermelons are a bright happy color of red. Americans associate melons with dessert and outdoor picnics and summer birthday parties.
Food starts at a farm, not a store. City people are so removed physically and psychologically from the source of their food that for most people, most of the time, going to a farm is an event, like going to a zoo. I try to make my farm a fun outing.
August and September are my favorite months to have visitors. Melons are ripe then. People enjoy letting their children climb onto my small John Deere tractor. Children can sit in the tractor seat and move the front-end loader up and down and rotate the bucket by pushing a lever in different directions. It is noisy, but not too noisy. It is safe; the tractor can't move. I wash the tractor before I know there will be guests.
The second thing I do is show people how to pick a ripe cantaloupe. In about five minutes visitors learn to distinguish the color of a ripe one from a similarly sized unripe one. Ripe cantaloupes "slip," which is the word for melons sliding easily off the stem. Un-ripe ones stay stuck to the vine. At first people are amazed that I can tell at a glance which ones will slip and which will not. Ripe ones are beige-ish green and unripe ones are greenish beige. When visitors figure it out they feel a sense of accomplishment.
Then the finale. Picking a ripe watermelon, dropping it, and eating it. This starts with going around the field thumping melons and listening to the sound. Unripe melons sound hollow. Remember this: "Sounds like a drum, the melon is bum." A ripe watermelon sounds "full." It goes "thud" in a dead sound. I help the visitor pick out a ripe watermelon, then we carry it to the side of the field. I ask them to drop it. Dropping a watermelon at my farm is likely the first time a person of any age has ever intentionally dropped a watermelon. It feels naughty somehow, but they do it.
Dropped from three feet in height, a watermelon breaks open but doesn't get mushed up. The flesh inside is exposed. Using a clean pocketknife I cut the heart into chunks and people eat it standing up, spitting out seeds in the field. One melon is usually enough but I urge people to eat all they want. I point to all the other melons. Part of the fun is the excess.Then they take one or two home.
That's it. People seem to like it. Parents and grandparents take pictures of their kids.
My father, Robert Sage, grew up at the farm that I now own and care for. He realized that his young sons needed a crop to grow that they would find exciting. So, at my age of eleven and my brother's age of eight, my father had us help him plant and care for a small melon patch. We sold the melons to a fellow operating a roadside produce stand on a then-vacant lot the corner of Jackson Street and 4th Street in Medford. We got to keep the money we earned, which meant we got to deposit it into our college fund bank accounts. It was fun to have money, and Jackson County Federal Savings and Loan paid us 4% interest. We got money just from having money! It seemed like such a sweet deal.
That was the start.
7 comments:
I was partly raised on my grandparents farm, and completely took it for granted. There was nothing novel about getting up at dawn and helping get the cows milked, or baling hay when I was a teenager. A chicken was sacrificed for Sunday dinner. I learned to drive in a beat up 1949 Chevy pickup. Looking back I now consider it a privileged upbringing.
It was only 10 acres, but it supported my grandparents. They sold the surplus crops and milk, and later rented the land to a neighbor. The farm was sold in the 80's and today is a subdivision. I wrote a song about it.
The rural lifestyle is deeply rooted in American culture. The cities, particularly in the West, have displaced farms and the family farm tradition is pretty much over. Economies of scale, again, coupled with the ease of importing foreign grown food have made it uneconomical, but the sentiment remains. Unfortunately, Regressive politicians have stoked this into resentment, and along with race have used it to create a largely fictional rural/urban division as a means to gain and hold power. MAGA is a perverse expression of the "good old days that never were", as if we could turn back time and undo the last century of progress, something no rational person would desire.
Thanks, Peter, for your farm report. Glad your melons survived. Even reading this I learned something about choosing melons.
Peter:
Your family’s stewardship of this land is admirable. What I know YOU know, that many others find difficult to accept, is how white privilege is tied to the story. Oregon’s constitution prohibited black people from even being here, let alone getting loans or subsidized crop insurance. East Asians were forcibly and violently evicted from Oregon, after their labor building railroads and mining was exploited. And indigenous peoples were massacred.
Meanwhile the government gave away land to white settlers to encourage white settlement. Even today, on local public radio, Shirley Patton does a “The Way It Was” segment where she’ll talk about when the first baby was born in the Rogue Valley in the 1859’s - not the 1st white baby, or the 1st settler’s baby. As if no one was here having babies before the Europeans arrived. Nostalgia… ain’t it great 👍
Peter:
Your family’s stewardship of this land is admirable. What I know YOU know, that many others find difficult to accept, is how white privilege is tied to the story. Oregon’s constitution prohibited black people from even being here, let alone getting loans or subsidized crop insurance. East Asians were forcibly and violently evicted from Oregon, after their labor building railroads and mining was exploited. And indigenous peoples were massacred.
Meanwhile the government gave away land to white settlers to encourage white settlement. Even today, on local public radio, Shirley Patton does a “The Way It Was” segment where she’ll talk about when the first baby was born in the Rogue Valley in the 1859’s - not the 1st white baby, or the 1st settler’s baby. As if no one was here having babies before the Europeans arrived. Nostalgia… ain’t it great 👍
Peter’s family fun farm. 😊
My father did the work described by Rick as a teenager on the family obtained by land in the 1840s. Sadly he was the last generation in my family to have that direct connection to the land. Now food comes in a box from Costco or Hello Fresh.
Thanks for the encouraging update, Peter. Hopefully, my grandsons will be in this area in August, it would be a great experience if I could show them a real farm.
I am proud to have known your dad. Truly enjoyed today's post. Hope crop survival rate exceeds your prediction
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