Transcription
It is the second week of July. You walk into the grocery store and the bin near the front is piled high with watermelons. Round ones, oval ones, some striped, some dark green. $6 each, $8 for the big ones. You pick one up, you turn it over in your hands, and you have no idea what you are looking for. The young clerk does not either. So, you tap on it the way your father used to tap on it, but you cannot remember what sound you are supposed to be listening for. You pick the one that looks the biggest, hope for the best, carry it home in your arms, and put it in the ice box.
Saturday afternoon, you cut it open in front of your family. The flesh is pale pink, not deep red. The white inside the rind is too thick. The seeds are still white instead of black, and the first bite is watery, mealy, and almost no taste at all. $6 on the counter, half of it going in the compost. You feed the worst of it to the chickens because nobody in the house will eat it.
Now, I want you to sit with this. There is no luck in picking a watermelon. There never was. Every farmer's wife in this country once knew exactly how to walk up to a pile of melons at a roadside stand and pick the sweetest one in the bin every single time. They had a set of small tests they did before they ever paid a dollar. And not one of those tests is hard, and not one of them costs anything. And any person in this country can learn the whole set in 15 minutes and never again bring a bad melon home.
I am Elias Yoder. I am Amish and I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My wife Esther grew up picking melons at the produce stand with her mother. Her mother learned from her mother before her. And I am going to walk you through the seven tests they taught us. The field spot, the tendril, the give, the thump, the weight, the shape, and the webbing. The complete old farmers checklist for finding a perfect watermelon. Pick up any melon in any store, do these seven tests in a minute and a half, and you will know before you ever put it in your cart whether you are bringing home sugar or disappointment.
One thing before I get into the tests, the old methods I share on this channel, there is too much of it to fit in any single video. So, I put the whole of it together in a book at my website eliasyoder.com for the folks who want the long version. I will not mention it again here. If you want it, you know where to look. Now, let me show you how the old folks picked their melons.
Test number one, and this is the most important one of all, is the field spot. Turn the watermelon over. Every melon has a spot on it. The place where the melon rested on the ground while it was growing on the vine. The sun did not touch that spot. Air did not move over it. It is the one place where the melon was in contact with the earth for its whole growing life. The color of that spot tells you almost everything. A creamy, buttery, deep yellow spot, golden like the color of fresh butter or thick cream, that means the melon stayed on the vine until it was good and ripe. The sun-warmed earth slowly turned that spot from green to white to yellow over the weeks of ripening. Deep yellow is what you want. A white spot or a very pale spot with no yellow in it, that melon was picked too early. It came off the vine before the sun and the earth had finished their work. It will be pale inside and watery and mostly tasteless. Walk away from it. A green spot or barely any spot at all, that melon was picked so early it never even settled into a resting position on the ground. Bad. Put it back.
This is the test the produce farmers themselves use when they walk their own fields. If Esther and I are at a friend's farm stand and the field spots are all pale white, we drive to another stand. No other test matters as much as this one. A deep buttery yellow spot is the single best indicator of ripeness on a watermelon. Better than the thump, better than the weight, better than anything else. Memorize the color. Buttery, golden, deep yellow. That is the color of a ripe melon's belly.
Test number two is the stem and the tendril. Look at the spot where the melon was cut from the vine, the little stem on the top. Besides it on the rind, there is sometimes still a small curly tendril, a little dried piece of vine that grew next to the melon. If the stem is brown and dried up and the curly tendril is brown and dry, that means the melon ripened on the vine and was harvested when it was ready to come off. The plant itself sent the signal. The vine pulled back its sap from the stem, the tendril withered, and the farmer picked the melon at the moment it asked to be picked. That is the melon you want. If the stem is still green, or the tendril is still soft and green, the farmer picked that melon before it was ready, while the vine was still feeding it. Green stem, green tendril, walk away. This test is harder at the grocery store because most stores cut the stems off short, and the tendrils are often gone. But if you were buying at a roadside stand, or a farmer's market, or directly from a farmer, this test is gold. Brown and dry means the vine let go. Green means the man with the knife let go too soon.
Test number three is the give. Press the watermelon gently with your thumb on the rind itself. Not hard, just a press. A ripe melon will give a tiny bit. You can feel a small softness under the rind, the way you can feel a ripe peach giving slightly under your thumb. The melon is full of water and sugar and life. It has a small spring to it. An unripe melon is hard as a rock, no give at all. Press your thumb against it, and the rind feels like green wood. An overripe melon, and this matters, too, will give too much. It will feel soft and almost mushy. The flesh inside has started to break down. That one you do not want, either. You are looking for that small, just-right give. Slight. Firm, but not stone. Like the resistance of a ripe pear's neck. Once you have felt the difference between a hard, unripe melon, and one with that little spring, you will know it in your hand for the rest of your life.
Test number four is the thump and this is the one everybody has heard of, but most folks do it wrong. Hold the melon up. Cup your hand against one side of it. With your other hand, give the rind a sharp flick or a knuckle tap, the way you would tap on a door. Listen carefully. There are three sounds a melon will make. A deep, hollow, low sound like tapping on a barrel half full of water. That means the melon is full of water inside and the flesh is light and firm. That is a ripe melon. The water in it is loose, the sugars are dissolved and the sound rings true. That is the sound you want. A dull, dead, flat thud like tapping on a piece of solid wood. That means the melon is unripe. The flesh inside is dense and tight and has not yet developed the loose water and sugar structure that ripens. Walk away from the dull thump. A soft, mushy, padded sound like tapping on a pillow. That means the melon is overripe and the flesh has started to break down. Also, walk away. Listen for the hollow, drum-like sound. Some folks tap with their knuckles. Some give it a quick, sharp flick with the back of a fingernail. Either way works. Once you have heard the difference between a ripe melon's deep boom and an unripe one's flat thud, your ear knows it.
Before I go on to the next three tests, let me pause for a moment. Every home has leaks, food, heat, water, electricity, laundry, repairs, and waste. Inside our Amish Home Savings System and Community, Esther and I help you find those leaks and start fixing them one by one. The link is in the description. Now, the last three tests. These are the ones the casual shoppers miss and the careful old folks always check.
Test number five is the weight. Pick the melon up, heft it, then pick up a second one of the same size and heft that one, too. A ripe watermelon should feel heavier than you expect for its size. The flesh is dense with sugar and water. A ripe one is 90% water by weight, and all that water is what gives it its weight. Heavy for its size is good. A light melon, one that feels almost airy in your hands for how big it looks, has lost water. Either it was picked too early and never finished filling out, or it sat in the store too long and dried out. Pale, mealy, disappointing flesh either way. This test is harder to do by yourself unless you have something to compare against. That is why you pick up two melons of the same size and compare them in your hands. The heavier one of the two is almost always the better one. Esther taught me this years ago and it has not failed me yet.
Test number six is the shape. A good watermelon should be evenly shaped, symmetrical, with smooth curves, no big lumps or flat sides. A round one should be evenly round. A long one should taper smoothly from end to end. Why does this matter? Because the shape of a watermelon is the record of how well the bees did their work on its flowers. When a watermelon flower is pollinated well, many bees visiting many times, the seeds inside develop evenly all the way around and the melon grows out into a smooth symmetrical shape. The sugars distribute evenly. The flesh ripens evenly. When the flower is poorly pollinated, few bee visits, weather got in the way, the field had no good pollinators, the seeds develop unevenly. The melon grows lumpy or lopsided with a flat side or a knobby end. The sugars distribute unevenly, too. One side may be sweet, the other side is bland and mealy. So, the round, even, symmetrical melon is the one the bees worked over many times. That is the sweet one. The lumpy, lopsided melon is the one with patchy pollination. The flesh inside will be patchy, too. This is one of those quiet truths from the field that most modern shoppers never hear. The bees decide which melons are sweet. The shape just tells you what the bees thought of it.
Test number seven is the webbing, the brown sugar lines. Look closely at the rind. You may see fine brown lines, almost like a faint spider's web pattern threaded across the surface of the melon. Some folks call them sugar lines. Some folks call them webbing. Some call them pollination scars. Those lines are gold. What they actually are? Tiny scars on the rind from places where the bees touched the flower many times while pollinating it. Each touch leaves a faint mark on the developing rind, which heals into that little brown line as the melon grows. The more webbing you see, the more bees worked the flower, the sweeter the melon. A heavily webbed melon with lots of those faint brown spider web lines spread across the rind is almost guaranteed to be sugar sweet inside. A perfectly clean, unmarked rind with no webbing at all means the bees did not visit much. Less webbing, less sugar. More webbing, more sugar. When Esther and I walk through a pile of melons at the farm stand, this is one of the tests we do last. After we have checked the field spot and the weight, we look for the webbing as the final tiebreaker. Two melons with good buttery yellow spots and good weight, the one with more brown sugar lines on the rind is the sweeter of the two, every time.
Now, I want to take a moment because this is where it all comes together. Look at what we have just walked through. Seven small tests. The field spot, buttery yellow, not white. The stem and tendril, brown and dry, not green. The give, a small spring, not stone hard. The thump, deep hollow boom, not flat thud. The weight, heavier than expected for the size. The shape, even and symmetrical, not lopsided. The webbing, brown spider web sugar lines on the rind, the more the better. Walk up to a pile of melons at any farm stand or grocery store in this country. Spend 90 seconds going through these tests on each candidate. You will not bring home another bad watermelon for the rest of your life. You will walk past the lopsided, pale spotted ones that everyone else is buying, and you will pick out the buttery yellow, brown stemmed, drum thumping, heavy, symmetrical, webbed sugar bombs that the old farmers' wives have always quietly known how to find.
And here is what I want you to know about why this knowledge faded. There is no money in teaching folks how to pick a sweet watermelon. The store does not benefit from a careful shopper. They would rather sell you the lopsided pale one for the same $6 as the perfect one and not have you know the difference. The supermarket chains do not run a commercial telling you to look at the field spot because then half their inventory would sit in the bin. So, the knowledge slowly stopped being passed down from grandmother to mother, from mother to daughter, from farmer to shopper. And whole nation now stands in the produce aisle picking melons at random and hoping. You do not have to hope. The tests work. The bees, the sun, the vine, and the earth left their fingerprints on every melon you will ever pick up. Read the fingerprints and you will eat sweet melon every Saturday from June to September.
So, here is what I want you to do. This week, go to a farm stand if there is one near you or to the produce section at your grocery store and walk through a pile of watermelons doing the seven tests. Pick up two or three. Compare them in your hands. Find the field spot. Look for the tendril. Feel the give. Thump the rind and listen. Feel the weight. Look at the shape. Hunt for the webbing. Pick the best one. Cut it open Saturday afternoon. Let your family taste the difference. Once they have tasted what a properly picked melon is supposed to taste like, deep red, dense, sugar sweet, full of water, the way watermelon was always meant to taste, they will never let you bring home a bad one again. And the children will start doing the tests with you the next time. That is how the knowledge comes back.
Tell me in the comments below which of the seven tests had you never heard of before. The webbing, the shape, the tendril, and if your grandmother or your mother had her own special way of picking a melon at the market, share it. The little family tricks are exactly the kind of knowledge that gets lost when nobody writes them down. I read every single one.
Next time, since we have been speaking of how to read the fruits and vegetables you bring home, I am going to show you the old way my people grow their own tomatoes. The seed saving, the planting, the staking, and the small habits that mean a single packet of seeds feeds your family fresh tomatoes from July to October and into jars for the whole winter. It is the natural next step after today. Until then, look for the buttery yellow spot, listen for the deep hollow boom, and remember that the bees, the sun, and the vine wrote a love letter on every good melon they ever made. You just have to know how to read it.