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Prized for its sweetness, the Bradford watermelon is making a comeback. From seeds handed down through the generations of his family, Nat Bradford now produces the late-season melons on a small scale.
Photo by Heather Grilliot
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Harvest time
Careful not to bruise the delicate rinds, Nat Bradford picks the first melons of the 2015 season. Although last summer’s drought led to a diminished harvest, Bradford says careful thinning of the vines and collection of seeds from the best melons will help strengthen the line against future dry spells.
Photo by Mic Smith
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Family business
On the family farm near Sumter, Nat and Bette Bradford raise their five kids as well as heirloom varieties of watermelon, okra and collards. Their children are (left to right) Theron, Noah, Aiden, Danny and Natalie. The farm is served by Black River Electric Cooperative.
Photo by Heather Grilliot
The first watermelon Nat Bradford grew remains burned in his memory. He was about to turn 5 years old in Sumter during the summer of 1980, and he had his own garden patch, which he would tend with his dad’s help. As the watermelon started to form, young Nat asked endlessly when it would be ready, excited by the magic of growing something from a seed, not to mention the anticipation of that first slice.
Then, one day, he was devastated to find his watermelon gone from the vine. He never found out who took it or why, though he searched for evidence. “I started looking around, opened the trash-can lid, and it was broken inside. I don’t even know if it was pink. It had a long way to go.”
Many years later, he would learn the full story behind the Bradford watermelon—a late-season treat so tender and sweet that thieves reportedly risked their lives for it. Yet the heartache he felt as a young boy taught him early that his family’s watermelons should be protected.
“These are precious things,” says Bradford, now 40, whose recent efforts to revive the heirloom melon have attracted national attention and led him on a new life path.
Thanks to the buzz about its history and unique qualities, the Bradford watermelon has become a celebrity on today’s food scene. When rated for sweetness, it boasts a Brix measurement of 12.5, compared to a 10 for most melons. At the same time, Bradford feels a spiritual call to share the crop with less-developed parts of the world where, he believes, the melons can provide needed sustenance.
A juicy legend
Shop for a watermelon at the supermarket today, and you have limited options, mostly based on size or whether you want to go seedless. But in the early days of America, after watermelons had found their way here in roundabout ways from Africa, a wide variety of distinct cultivars emerged, and the most popular became known by name.
Introduced around 1840, the Bradford watermelon has an intriguing lineage, according to food historian and author David Shields, the University of South Carolina professor who dug up its past. His telling of the legend starts with the Lawson watermelon.
Captured during the American Revolution, Patriot John Franklin Lawson was traveling to the West Indies on a prison ship in 1783 when the captain gave him a memorable melon slice. Lawson saved the seeds and, after being freed, brought them back to Georgia, where everyone agreed that his watermelon, while lumpy and difficult to grow, tasted better than any around.
He shared his seeds with Nathaniel Napoleon Bradford of Sumter County, who crossed the Lawson with the Mountain Sweet watermelon.
“It produces this extraordinary picnic melon that is absolutely dark green, very sweet, white seeded, red fleshed, and it has an inch-thick rind that is spoon tender and is the ideal rind for making watermelon pickles,” says Shields.
The Bradford watermelon became so treasured that it had to be protected from poachers. Growers even made it known that they had poisoned one or two in the field, only to fall victim occasionally to their own security system.
But as the South rebuilt its agricultural economy following the Civil War, Shields says, farmers turned their attention to melons that could be shipped long distances, and by the start of the 1900s, the Bradford watermelon’s widespread popularity faded. “The problem is that its rind is so tender that it crushes when you stack them more than two deep in a boxcar.”
Once a Southern darling, it became an increasingly anonymous backyard watermelon, though the Bradford family continued to quietly grow it in Sumter, its birthplace, where its reputation lingered with locals.
Piecing history together
Growing up, Nat Bradford understood watermelons were a family tradition but didn’t know how far back it went. He had not heard of Nathaniel Napoleon Bradford, who preceded him by six generations.
He did know that his great-grandfather, Linwood Bonneau Bradford, grew the watermelons as a hobby long before World War II. Clemson Extension agent Jim Eleazer documented that fact when he included his friend “Chief” Bradford in the book 50 Years Along the Roadside.
Chief Bradford passed along his wisdom and seeds to son Theron Bradford, Nat’s grandfather, who kept the sideline effort going in Sumter and recruited Nat to help in his fields as early as age 9. As a teenager, Nat sold Bradford watermelons for extra cash, often to patients at his dad’s dermatology office.
More than his siblings, he showed a passion for plants, one he pursued by studying landscape architecture at Clemson University. He finished in 1997 with an internship in Pennsylvania at Longwood Gardens, which, he says, has one of the “richest and most extensive horticulture libraries in the world.” His exit paper led him to search for the family watermelon in old journals, where he found a cultivar called Bradford on a list of best garden choices from the mid-1800s.
Could it be the same one?
While he couldn’t confirm the connection, the possibility nagged at him as he returned with his wife to South Carolina and started a landscape architecture business and a family in Seneca. The question bubbled back up in 2012, as Bradford considered a career shift to sustainable agriculture.
By that time, Shields had uncovered much of the Bradford watermelon history as part of a quest to restore forgotten favorites to Southern fields and tables, an expansion of his work with heirloom grains through the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. But he had not been able to track down Bradford watermelon seeds, despite an exhaustive search.
Shields posted his frustrations on the American Heritage Vegetables page he maintains through USC. “It was a kind of complaint that this greatest of all watermelons had vanished from the face of the earth, you know. And who should send me an email at 2 a.m. some morning but Nat Bradford.”
Watermelon bounty
They both savored the moment.
“It was just exciting to know that it all started in Sumter, and it’s been passed down, father to son, all those generations,” says Bradford, who now has five children of his own.
Shields, meanwhile, was delighted to learn the family still had seeds. Bradford had collected some over previous years and was able to add a stash from his dad. He also found a bucketful at the house of his grandfather, who had passed away. “It had a handwritten note from my Paa Paa, and it said, ‘Bradford Watermelons 1990–93.’”
The Bradfords had never been large-scale commercial growers and had avoided using irrigation and chemicals on their small fields. Instead, they saved seeds from the best melons in each harvest and blended different years to nurture natural resiliency. “It’s like stirring the genetic pool,” Bradford explains.
With encouragement from Shields, he ramped up growing efforts in 2013 with two pints of seeds. He divided them between two plots, a small one in Salem and another in Sumter, and began by planting 12 seeds to a hill, then thinning each hill to the two strongest plants. The 440 plants left produced 465 melons, more than 100 percent yield in spite of heavy rains that devastated many other South Carolina farms. Bradford also saved 13 quarts of seeds for the future.
Shields offered guidance on how to market the melons, as did Glenn Roberts, the other driving force behind Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. The duo opened doors for Bradford and fed a frenzy of interest from South Carolina chefs in upscale eateries, pushing prices up to $20 a melon.
They encouraged Bradford to use the melons in old-fashioned ways, arranging for watermelon molasses to be made from the juice at McCrady’s restaurant in Charleston, as well as pickles from the rind. High Wire Distilling Co. in Charleston made a splash crafting 130 bottles of Bradford watermelon brandy that sold out at $79 a pop. “The foodies got ahold of it, and it took on a life of its own,” says Scott Blackwell, owner of the artisan distillery.
The PBS TV show Mind of a Chef aired a clever animated segment of the Bradford watermelon legend with narration by Shields. And when NPR’s The Salt featured the story last May, it led to a run on seed packets sold through the Bradford Watermelon Company’s website. By that time, Bradford had collected nearly 25,000 seeds.
Guided by faith
The revival came at the right time, considering America’s increasing appetite for heirloom crops. A man of faith, Bradford says, “We really believe that God is leading us to do this, and He’s opening up the doors.”
The soft rind still limits shipping, so Bradford’s fresh watermelons will always be sold close to home. He hopes that people in other parts of the country will enjoy them by getting seeds to grow their own, though they may need to be patient as the cultivar adapts to new surroundings.
Even Bradford faced a tough growing year in 2015 due to the summer’s unusually dry conditions. Because he felt the crop did not meet Bradford watermelon standards for fresh sales, he used them all for rind pickles, molasses and brandy. This year, he expects to have 1,000 or so fresh watermelons to sell in South Carolina.
A percentage of total sales is earmarked for the company’s nonprofit effort, Watermelons for Water, which is helping to fund clean-water-collection systems in rural Tanzania, a need Bradford learned about at church. The Bradfords also sent watermelon seeds to Tanzania so residents can try to establish a drought-resistant line. It seems fitting to Bradford, given the watermelon’s original roots in Africa.
If successful, the Bradford watermelon could be very beneficial to impoverished villages, since each one can grow up to 40 pounds and yield up to 4½ gallons of nutrient-dense liquid.
“That’s the soul behind what we’re doing,” Bradford says, “the window to be able to share God’s creation and how He’s implanted each seed with such abundance.”
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Get More
For more information on Bradford watermelons, to order seeds or to find out when and where harvested melons are available for sale, visit bradfordwatermelons.com.
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Related story
Restoring superstar crops – Learn more about the effort to rescue forgotten heirloom crops that fed generations of South Carolinians.