Friday, April 4, 2014

Dad's Watermelon Memories

Some of the old timers around Elk Horn, Iowa would remember when a teenager named Lynn would take watermelon to town. He would take a wagon behind a Farmall H, which was new at the time and sit on main street and sell delicious melons. This was a popular venue for the folks in town to get a taste of summer, I'll bet he took sweet corn a few times too. Later the better Elk Horn club would host a watermelon day at the city park and I always wondered if the roots of that event weren't from a local teenager, who later became my father.

I'm sure dad hasn't really thought much about watermelons in the last few years, but I have.

We grew about 15 different types of water melons last year. I was trialing some new ones to see how well they did in Rochester, Minnesota where we live. Watermelon like warm soil and lots of sun. We aren't too close to the equator in Minnesota, so sometimes warm soil and sun are in short supply. Well we had a good summer for melons, except is was pretty dry. I don't know how they do it but I would swear watermelon vines can make "melons" out of thin air.

We had watermelons until just before Thanksgiving. I sold 75 melons the week before Thanksgiving.  Dad used to have a trick that he would use to keep watermelons until Christmas. He would bury them in the oats bin to keep them from freezing. Pretty slick trick and he said it worked well.  I don't have an oats bin to try that one out, but ours kept pretty well anyway. Thanks for the memories Dad.

This post is in memory of Brian's Dad who is growing watermelons with Jesus in heaven since Sunday, March 30, 2014.

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