Salute to Idaho Agriculture: Watermelon harvest

BLISS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — When you think of the ideal place to grow fruit, tropical places with white sand beaches and beautiful weather year-round immediately come to mind. Idaho on the other hand....not so much.

However at Hagerman Canyon Farms in Bliss, they have found a method to cultivate roughly 30 tons of watermelon every single year.

The farm has 60 fields strictly for watermelon growth which equates to over 500 acres of land.

“It’s really difficult in a cooler area, but we have learned to use different plastics and mini tunnels to warm up the soil and utilize what heat we do have, and Idaho does produce a really good crop for a short season,” Hagerman Canyon Farms General Manager David Jentzsch said.

A team of about 80 workers deal with the entire harvesting process.

The first group inspects each area of melons in the field to make sure they are ripe for picking. If it is acceptable, it’s loaded onto the truck and brought back to the facility for cleaning.

A cool aspect of Hagerman Canyon Farms is that trucks can be unloaded simply by backing into a stream of water, rather than by a team of people.

Once in the water, the fruit moves to a conveyor belt to be dried and stickered. From there the second group sorts them by size: small, medium and large. And places them into the corresponding bins

A bin is full once it contains 60 watermelons. From there, the final group takes them to the refrigeration area via forklift where they await a final destination.

“We just strive to produce a very high quality, local crop....The less time that it’s in transit you will get a higher quality product,” Jentzsch said.

In the Magic Valley, Hagerman Canyon Farms watermelons can be found at grocery stores including: Smith’s, Swensen’s, Albertson’s and WinCo.

But a majority of them will end up in major metro areas like Boise, Seattle and Salt Lake City.

The watermelon harvest will continue into September and crews will continue harvesting roughly 12-hours a day for 6 days a week.

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