Melon Farm

I had such a great time hanging out at the farm on Saturday. I drove roughly 1hr outside of Torreon to a small rancho called Buenavista. This rancho is almost 400 years old and Don Jose, one of my maintenance guys at work and tour guide for the morning, is very proud of that. Very cool. I want to go back and shoot the rancho and the old ruins. Apparently, when it rains, not often, a river runs through the rancho and over time this river has cut through the landscape leaving a bunch of cool formations. It's on my list to visit.

Okay, back to the farm.
The owner of the farm is Victor Gonzalez. He was super nice and was supervising his guys as they loaded up the truck with Cantaloupes.
This is what I learned from Sr. Victor. The Cantaloupe season lasts around 20 days. It's best if your crop is early because the price usually declines midway through the season. On a positive note, the price of melons has stayed high this year. I was happy to here that. He gets 2.4 pesos per Kilo if he sells to the packing plant. On the street he can get about 5 pesos a Kilo. The packing plant washes the fruit, packages it and sends it to Walmart and other big chains. Picking melons is fairly straightforward. The guys detect ripe fruit visually and if it just pops off the vine they take it. Watermelons are different. For one, the season is 60 days. He has his most veteran guys picking watermelons because it is much more difficult to detect ripe vs unripe fruit. No wonder I suck at picking watermelon. Good thing for me he gave me 2 massive watermelons. So good.
At the end of my time they cut up some cantaloupe and we all ate together. That was neat.

Here are some photos of my time at the farm.

Senor Victor Gonzalez




That looks like hard work....


This guy used a bottle cap to take off the stem.


The would toss the melons to one row so that the it was easier to pick them up later.