Melons

Daryl Mast
Aug 02, 2024
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Watermelon

This week we included large, red, seedless watermelons in our Fruit Boxes. However, if you had a Fruit Box delivered this week…you will know that there was no box:) The melons were too big for our boxes…so we just set the bulky fruit on your porch. And by now, many of you will have sliced, diced, and devoured your melon. NEXT week we will have these melons available a la carte.

My family is eating our second watermelon for the week…they are delicious! As I have enjoyed these melons, I couldn’t help but remember eating watermelon as a kid. My mother would pick up watermelons each summer for our family to enjoy. Our farm had a ‘Spring House’. It was a small stone building (maybe 10’x16’) that was built over a spring. The one end of the building had a trough built into it. The spring water bubbled up through the ‘floor’ of the trough and filled it with cold fresh water. There was an overflow pipe that allowed the water to run out of the pipe and into the nearby stream. The original purpose of the springhouse was to chill milk. Before modern refrigeration, springhouses were used to keep milk cold until the milk truck arrived to pick it up. Milk was stored in metal milk cans and submerged in the water trough in the spring house.

By the time I arrived on the farm in the 70s, the spring house was no longer being used. However, I spent many hours playing in the cold water. The spring house was located in one of our pastures. My father had the door nailed shut to keep the cows from pushing their way inside. I would climb in a window:)

Anyway, I bring this all up because my mother would put our watermelons in the spring water to keep them nice and cold.

I was also reminded of the seeds. As a kid we would almost always eat watermelon outside. This was to allow us to spit seeds wherever we wanted. Today, most watermelon are seedless. This was a mystery to me. I did a little research on this … and this guy can explain it much better then I can.

Farm Shares & Fruit Boxes

Order by noon on Friday for delivery the following week.
Next week’s predicted contents list for delivery between
Monday, August 5 - Friday, August 9