Posted on 05/19/2015 6:51:40 PM PDT by Theoria
The most luscious watermelon the Deep South has ever produced was once so coveted, 19th-century growers used poison or electrocuting wires to thwart potential thieves, or simply stood guard with guns in the thick of night. The legendary Bradford was delectable — but the melon didn't ship well, and it all but disappeared by the 1920s. Now, eight generations later, a great-great-great-grandson of its creator is bringing it back.
The story of the Bradford begins on a prison ship during the American Revolutionary War. It was 1783, and the British had captured an American soldier named John Franklin Lawson and shipped him off to the West Indies to be imprisoned. Aboard the prison ship, the Scottish captain gave Lawson a wedge of watermelon that was so succulent, he saved every seed. When he got home to Georgia, Lawson planted the seeds and grew a popular watermelon. Around 1840, Nathaniel Napoleon Bradford of Sumter County, S.C., crossed the Lawson with the Mountain Sweet. By the 1860s, the Bradford watermelon was the most important late-season melon in the South.
The Bradford boasted fragrant red flesh, pearly seeds and a rind so soft you could slice it with a butter knife. The fruit was more than just a savory summer treat — its sweet juice was routinely boiled into molasses or distilled into brandy for cocktails garnished with fruit and syrup, and the smooth soft rinds were pickled. Home cooks often turned to watermelon molasses to preserve fresh fruit for the winter.
But the oblong, soft-skinned Bradford was never suited to stacking and long-distance shipping. In 1922, the last commercial crop was planted, and the melon wholly gave way to varieties with tough rinds.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
I’ll have to try it again. I couldn’t get on to the site last week.
Darnit! They’re out of seeds.
Nice! Bookmarked the website to order seeds next fall.
Not mentioned in the NPR piece but the Bradford family seem to be believing Christians. From the site:
[snip]
Our mission: To drill fresh water wells all over the world and provide medication to treat waterborne illnesses. My family and I prayed for guidance on how to use this family treasure in an amazing way that would bring God glory and have great impact in the world. One Sunday morning in church our pastor was sharing about a mission to drill fresh water wells in Africa. He shared a statistic that floored me. Every day around the world over 3000 people die of illnesses from poor drinking water, many of them are small children. That’s one person every 30 seconds. Most can be cured with a 30 cent pill. I imagined one of those grieving mothers losing her precious child. I imagined how painful it would be to lose one of my children that way. Unbearable. Unconscionable. That instant Watermelons for Water was conceived.
[snip]
My mothers older brothers called watermelons Augedy melons, it was a family thing I guess.
Darn it, now I want watermelon. When I purchase one in summer I eat that the whole thing myself over several days. Best food to cool off with.
please remove my name from this FReep list
bert
Why are you pinging me?
I don’t have you on any ping lists of mine.
I don’t recall the last time I pinged you for anything.
YOU have good taste! As a kid in East Tennessee, we would eat watermelon under the Locust trees in Pawpaw’s yard, getting liquid all over our bare legs. Paw would tell us we were about ready for a dog bath ... in his childhood the dogs were allowed to lick the sticky juice from the kids.
Gardening ping
My personal favorites, homegrown here, are black diamond, and the yellow-fleshed black diamond; I’ve always found the yellow-flesh watermelons to be much better tasting in general.
From GGG?
Good old days. Life has changed so much.
Oh you may not realize just how right you are! Most old men can tell you ...
I don’t know if I saw it at FR or in an archaeology journal, but some 2,000 year old date seeds from the Israel area have been sprouted. Apparently this date was so delicious it was a major economic product of the Jewish areas, so the Roman’s systematically set about to destroy all traces of the plant. I so hope they will succeed in revitalizing the line.
no, not from GGG
I got the wrong thread.
I do not want to receive the posts from the religion thread list
No problem. I get mixed up when I have too many tabs open, myself. :’(
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