carolinafarmstewards.org/rebir…lon-a-new-history-begins/
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I found myself in one of Charleston’s most acclaimed restaurants a few weeks ago with some of the most talented budding chefs in the world and Thomas Locke from CFSA resurrecting a recipe that had not been attempted in 125 years with a fruit that was supposed to be extinct. I could not have predicted this a year ago. It began last fall when I had the privilege of attending my first Sustainable Ag Conference in Greenville, SC when a dear friend’s wife could not attend and had an extra ticket. That turned out to be the catalyst of change that would redefine the rest of my life.
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A bit of history first though, my Great granddaddy “Chief” Bradford was born with the green gene, with a real knack for mixing, tinkering, and improving the crops on his farm. His passion, though, was for his “Bradford” watermelons, known far and wide as the sweetest and most flavorful around. It was the finest watermelon for making pickled rind, too, spoon tender right down to its dark green skin. It was this tender skin, undoubtedly, that made it nigh impossible to ship and so it never roamed far from our family fields. He always planted the Bradford late and had developed in them strength to fend off the diseases that tend to plague the cucurbit family at the end of the summer. Everyone else was out of melons by the time his started coming in so if you wanted a watermelon you had to see Chief.
He taught my Granddaddy everything about growing and preserving the Bradford watermelon line. From him the seeds and knowledge were passed down to my Dad, and finally to me. That’s the story the way I knew it until the summer of 1998.
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Fortunately, I inherited my Great granddaddy’s green gene and his passion for watermelon that in a roundabout way led to a career in landscape architecture. In the spring of 1997 while doing research for an internship I had at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, I came across a book from the 1850’s that chronicled the best vegetables and fruits of that time. Of course, I quickly flipped to the section on watermelons, several of which were listed as being far more superior to any market melon of that day. Of those listed the author distinguished one as being the absolute best, and to my surprise it was called Bradford, originated in the central portion of South Carolina! My Bradford family had been in the heart of South Carolina since before the American Revolution. Could this Bradford watermelon of the 1800s be the same as our Bradford watermelon? I would carry this question unanswered for the next 14 years.
So here I am in Greenville, SC at CFSA’s sustainable agriculture conference. After meeting so many wonderful people passionate about healthy food and farming I found my love of farming reignited. Landscape Architecture was not going to be enough to squelch this burning desire to farm. I wanted to get back into beekeeping again, I wanted to grow a big vegetable garden, most importantly, I wanted to know the answer to the unresolved Bradford watermelon question. One sleepless night I sat down to the computer and began searching for anything Bradford watermelon related. Eventually, I came across a site called American Heritage Vegetables by Professor David Shields at the University of South Carolina. David’s passion is reconnecting with generations old heritage vegetable varieties that shaped our food system into what it is today. His section on watermelons listed the same varieties that I had seen in the 1850s book including the Bradford watermelon. Could David possibly solve my watermelon mystery? I sent him an email in the middle of the night explaining my story and requesting his insight. By early that morning I would have my answer.
Indeed they were one and the same watermelon! It was my namesake, Nathaniel Bradford, my sixth Great Grandfather that bred the Bradford watermelon, preserved undetected for 170 years and believe to be extinct for around a century. David was able to finish the story. Nathaniel had shared seeds of the perfected watermelon with some well-connected and successful seedsmen in the early 1850s. From those seeds a very profitable commercial line developed and soon became the most popular and widespread watermelon of the 19th century in spite of its resistance to shipping. By the early 1900s watermelons had been developed with hard, thick skins and tough rinds at the sacrifice of flavor, ultimately more profitable because they were able to be shipped stacked many layers deep on railroad cars with very little breakage. Thus, no longer was the ambitious farmer relegated to marketing his melons to his locale. And so the greatest watermelon to have come from that great age of watermelon breeding, the Bradford watermelon, fell out of cultivation and became lost to the annuls of history. However, although the commercial line disappeared, my family never stopped growing the original watermelon.
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If your Doctor is a tree, you're on acid.