How to Pick a Sweet Watermelon... The Old AMISH Way

Описание: It is the second week of July. You walk into the grocery store and the bin near the front is piled high with watermelons. Six dollars each. You pick one up, turn it over in your hands, and have no idea what you are looking for. You tap on it the way your father used to, but you cannot remember what sound you are supposed to be listening for. You carry one home, hope for the best.
Saturday afternoon, you cut it open. The flesh is pale pink, the white inside the rind is too thick, and the first bite is watery, mealy, almost no taste at all. Six dollars on the counter, half of it going in the compost.
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 and pick the sweetest one in the bin every single time. The tests are not hard. They cost nothing. Any person can learn the whole set in fifteen minutes.
In this video I walk you through the seven traditional tests the old farmer's wives used — the same tests Esther grew up using with her mother at the produce stand:
1. The field spot — the most important test. The yellow patch where the melon rested on the ground tells you almost everything. Deep buttery yellow means ripened on the vine. White or pale means picked too early.
2. The stem and tendril — brown and dry means the vine let go on its own. Green means the farmer picked too soon.
3. The give — a slight spring under your thumb means ripe. Rock-hard means unripe. Mushy means overripe.
4. The thump — a deep hollow boom means ripe. A dull dead thud means unripe. A soft padded sound means past its prime.
5. The weight — a ripe melon should feel heavier than you expect for its size. Water and sugar give it weight.
6. The shape — even, symmetrical melons grew under heavy bee pollination and ripen evenly sweet. Lopsided melons ripen patchy.
7. The webbing — faint brown spiderweb lines on the rind are pollinator scars. The more webbing, the more bees worked the flower, the sweeter the melon.
I am Amish, and I will be honest with you the whole way. I will not pretend these are Amish secrets. These are shared traditional knowledge — every farmer's wife and grandmother for generations has used them. They have just quietly stopped being passed down, because nobody at the grocery store has any reason to teach you to pick the best melon.
In ninety seconds at any farm stand or grocery store, you can run all seven tests and pick the sweetest melon in the bin every time.
Tell me in the comments — which of the seven had you never heard of before? The webbing? The shape? The tendril? And if your grandmother had her own way of picking a melon, 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: the old way my people grow their own tomatoes — the seed-saving, the planting, the staking, the small habits that feed your family fresh tomatoes from July to October. Subscribe so you do not miss it.
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