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Beating the daily rind
Posted by:
monkey on
August 19, 2008 at
11:48PM EST
When 88-year-old John Pearson was just a boy, his father gave him a small plot of sandy land to work in Warren County, Indiana.
And work it he did.
“It’s never been easy, that never changed,” he said last week from his melon farm near Cayuga. “There’s no other way to do it.”
The small plot was perfect for growing watermelons, and Pearson spent his youthful summers planting, picking, thumping and delivering watermelons to customers in small towns around the
region.
“In those days you had to go into town and tell everybody they were ripe,” he said. “It’s not like today, with television and all.”
Pearson would eventually leave his father’s farm and find a job at Harrison Steel, but he never stopped growing
watermelons.
When he was in his 40s he quit his steelworker’s job and bought his own farm just off Indiana Route 234, a spot that would become a regular destination for Danville-area families looking for a country drive that ended with a dribble of watermelon juice on their chins.
The original stand started becoming less of a destination around 13 years ago when the Pearson family rented a spot along Illinois Route 1 in Tilton and built a farm stand to sell their produce directly to Vermilion County residents.
Made in the shade
Pearson, whose daughter took over the business in the 1980s, still spends long days with his melons, though he does it sitting in the shade at the original stand located beside his rural home.
Most days he waits for customers and chats about produce, his dog sitting by his side. When he’s got an appointment and can’t man the stand, he simply puts out a jar with a sign instructing customers of the prices and where they should leave their money. He trusts them to make the correct change in his absence.
“I still like being with the people,” he said. “I don’t pick ’em anymore, I just wait for customers. It’s been a little slow this morning, but they’ll be out here.”
With that he returns to his shady spot and waits for the early-morning fog to give way to a sunny day, knowing his melons are awaiting the same thing.
Family plots
Down the road just a couple of miles from the original Pearson’s melon stand, daughter Patsy is putting her picking crew into the field for another round.
“It’s come full circle for me,” she said just moments after loading dozens of ripe watermelons and cantaloupe onto a wholesaler’s wagon. “We had a crick bottom with sandy soil and dad always grew watermelons. I went to college and said, ‘This is too hard work, I’m not going to do this.’”
She not only came back, she took over the 25 acres of melons (and the five acres of pumpkins and gourds, and the two acres of tomatoes) around 1988 and realized she loved tilling the Earth after all.
“I realized that you have to really work hard at this, but at the end of the day it’s yours,” she said.
Around 1995 Patsy set up the Tilton stand, a move she said has worked out well for the farm considering the diminishing traveling trend among customers. During harvest season she simply picks the melons, loads them on the truck and delivers them the 30-mile distance to the stand. During the busiest times it can mean a second trip.
“The stand has worked out well because most of our customers were from Illinois anyway,” she said.
The weather has not been ideal for his year’s crop, though a field-picked melon was sweet and juicy on the spot. She said the crew takes samples throughout the day to determine which spots have ripe fruit ready to pick.
Patsy said taking over the business has given her the added joy of allowing her father to continue being a part of something he has devoted so much of his life to.
“Back then he just decided he wanted to change his career and be a watermelon farmer,” she said. “He just did it.”
And even in his advanced years he still can’t seem to shake his passion for the growing business.
“He still really loves to wait on customers, but you might have to tell him how much you owe him,” she said. “He’s out there all the time.”
Office space
Growing and selling melons sounds simple enough until you consider the scale of doing it on multiple acres.
Patsy constantly is on the move during harvest season — from field to market to distributor to field, and then occasionally to home — and a 12-hour day means some job probably was put off until tomorrow.
“It’s never-ending,” she said after being interrupted by one of three phone calls before the crew hit the field’s halfway mark. “Everywhere’s my office.”
Equipment malfunctions and weather are the two biggest worries, and Patsy said she is always working on alternate plans to get the produce out of the field and to buyers before it goes bad.
“Sometimes you have to have a plan ‘C,’ ‘D’ or ‘E,’” she said.
Patsy’s desktop is many times the bumper of a trailer, as was the case in a deal with Bob O’Neil of Lafayette, who left his home early that morning in the hopes of getting a good deal on a load of watermelons after the Pearson Farm’s melon conveyor malfunctioned.
O’Neil and Patsy hadn’t discussed a set price and were debating the size and weight of the melons after they had already been loaded. Both of them used an almost backwards form of dickering, with each round ending in the other saying, “Whatever you think is fair.”
After a few free melons thrown in for good measure, both sides agreed to a price.
“Somebody told me about Patsy about five years ago,” he said. “They were right. She does an excellent job with this place and she’s honest.
“I don’t want to take advantage of anybody, and she doesn’t either,” he said. “As long as she’s happy and I’m happy, that’s how it works.”
Love de-vine
Patsy, who didn’t change her last name when she started managing the family business, remarried two years ago, several years after her first husband was killed in a tragic accident.
She and her second husband, Ken Steffen, had known each other for around 12 as nearby business owners and farmers, and had continued to cross paths after Patsy’s first husband died and Steffen was divorced.
“We liked each other from the beginning,” she said, though there were no romantic overtures until both were single.
“We always had a very good business relationship,” Steffen recalled. “Some people you just trust and I saw that in her right away.”
The two would see each other only occasionally, when the business of his 50-acre produce farm would cross hers. One day he couldn’t resist the attraction and asked her out to dinner.
“She was on a hay wagon and she was sweaty and hot and all dirty,” he said. “I said, ‘You look like you could use a break.’”
The pair was married two years ago and Patsy took on Steffen’s last name.
Steffen said his wife’s penchant for hard work and drive to make the farm successful is a part of his respect and attraction towards her.
“She’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known,” he said. “We’re a good complement because she is persistent and really focused on the details. I tend to look at the big picture.”
Steffen has been a horticulturist most of his life, though a good portion of his knowledge was shared as a professor at Penn State University. At some point, the University of Illinois graduate said he discovered a need to get back to the soil. His farm, though not organically certified, uses organic techniques to grow a variety of produce.
He now gets his hands dirty more often than in his teaching days, which he said is a good thing.
“Since I was a kid I wanted to have stewardship of a parcel of land,” he said. “And we’re getting the farms set up the way we want it. This isn’t a textbook -it’s more real.”
     
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