Watermelon Honey

When I was about twelve, my mom and I drove to Fort Morgan to gather at my Uncle Jake’s farm to cook Watermelon Honey with her sisters, Kate, Dorothy, Martha, Nancy, and Kay. 

Uncle Jake and Uncle Ed grew watermelons in the cornfields, and after harvest they were taken by truck to Uncle Jake’s farm.  There, an outdoor stove had been built many years before by my grandfather.  Grandpa had retrofitted a piece of farm machinery with three large (probably five gallons each?) cast iron kettles sunk into the surface with room to build large wood fires below.  Each kettle was supervised by one Aunt, and one Aunt was in charge of the fires. 

My job – with my female cousins – was to haul the watermelons to the gathering area and wash them.  The older cousins and a few of the boys were given the job of cutting the watermelons in half. Imagine large, sharp knives in the hands of teenagers.  Scary.  Of course, half of the fun was squirting each other with the seeds and juices.   The boys then carried the cut watermelons to a huge table where the Aunts would scrape the fruit from the rind and run it through the large, cone shaped colanders to separate the pulp and seeds from the juice.   The juices were poured into the kettles in the stove and brought to a boil.  This was tricky, because the honey had to boil and bubble to reduce, but it also burned easily.  The Aunts used really large wooden spoons to (maybe they were oars, now that I think about it) to stir the juices.  Once the juices had turned a rust color and thickened, the hot honey was poured into mason jars and sealed. 

This was late August, and it was hot.  And the job was sticky – I mean really sticky.  The bees liked the sticky mess, so they were buzzing around.  As the sun began to set, Uncle Jake and Grandpa brought out the hoses and hosed down everything – the stove, the kettles, the fires, the tables, the ground, and of course the cousins and, inevitably, the Aunts.  Amid screeches and threats of bodily harm we cooled down and cleaned up.  Everyone went home with tasty treasures in glass jars and memory treasures to last for years to come.