Watermelon

[lilranch2001]

I thought roadside stands were a thing of the past, or almost so at least. Before the days of the Interstate Highway system, they were common along U.S. 77 in southern Oklahoma for peaches, watermelons, apple cider, honey, etc. And over around Rush Springs, lots of stands for watermelon. At one time, I guess before the invention of the watermelon thresher, there were stands along the road where you could stop and eat all the watermelon you wanted . . . Free; just had to put the seeds in the bucket since they were raising them for the seeds.

I think maybe the last roadside stand I stopped at was to purchase ears of corn along U.S. 220 just south of Sayre, PA, in 1993.

We have several local road side veggie stands here in Indiana
Farmer Home grown stuff, usually very high quality!

 

[Bird]

We have several local road side veggie stands here in Indiana
Farmer Home grown stuff, usually very high quality!

I guess if a person was on a road with a lot of traffic, but not an Interstate, maybe he could do pretty well. I'm glad to hear such still exists.

 

[lilranch2001]

usually they are on country highways
self serve, drop the money in a cash box

 

[JakeBrake]

The saying around here is that the best place to grow watermelons is on somebody else's property. Our property is in an area that is famous for watermelons. So, we have itinerant commercial watermelon growers running the roads looking for open land that they can rent for a season to grow watermelons. Usually, the itinerant watermelon growers only grow melons for one season and then allow the land to lie fallow for a few seasons. Personally, I don't think this is the ideal way to manage our property.

Incidentally, coyotes love watermelons.

 

[Larro Darro]

The saying around here is that the best place to grow watermelons is on somebody else's property. Our property is in an area that is famous for watermelons. So, we have itinerant commercial watermelon growers running the roads looking for open land that they can rent for a season to grow watermelons. Usually, the itinerant watermelon growers only grow melons for one season and then allow the land to lie fallow for a few seasons. Personally, I don't think this is the ideal way to manage our property.

Incidentally, coyotes love watermelons.

We have leased out our land to melon growers. But just for one season. We put it right back into hay and row crops the next year. And when we grew melons to sell, the coyotes stole more than everything else put together. They can pick the ten ripe ones out of a field of thousands. We got a permit to shoot them at night with a light. Spent many nights in the field, but never killed one.

 

[powerpace]

On a hot day when I'm getting a little dehydrated while working a good watermelon is better than just plain water for my personal choice.

 

[Bird]

Incidentally, coyotes love watermelons.

You know there are (or used to be) one town in Texas, one in Arkansas, and one in Oklahoma that each claimed to be the watermelon capital of the world. The one in Oklahoma was Rush Springs. In the mid-50s we used to live in Marlow, about 10 miles south of Rush Springs. Lots of watermelons grown around there. And I remember the local newspaper ran articles warning people (teenagers mostly) about stealing watermelons in the field. They said, first of course, don't do it, but if you do, be sure you pull it off the vine because some of the farmers were pulling ripe melons off the vine, leaving them in the field, and injecting them with poison with a hypodermic needle in an effort to kill the coyotes. I have no idea how successful that was.

 

[Larro Darro]

Not sure what made these marks, but I went ahead and clipped it early. An almost ripe cantaloupe is better than no cantaloupe at all.

 

[jinman]

Looks like dog toenail marks to me. I think raccoon would be narrower. Maybe a coyote tried to break it open with his foot. He didn't try very hard because those three marks don't look like a scratching motion at all.

 

[Larro Darro]

I thought the same thing, Jinman. We don't have many dogs come through, but maybe a fox. We see one all along in the yard. It was ripe enough a coyote would have ate it. Maybe he was waiting on the red melons to get ripe.