After nearly three decades selling produce at the Santa Fe Farmers Market, ‘Melon Man’ contemplates retirement

This might be the last season at the Santa Fe Farmers Market for Jake “The Melon Man” West, who’s been coming from Fort Sumner to sell his produce for 70 years.

“I started coming to Santa Fe with my dad when I was 9,” he said. “It was the highlight of my summer when I was a little guy.”

On Saturday, West sat on the tailgate of his pickup, loaded with 200 seedless watermelons, in a rare spot of shade in the parking lot of DeVargas Center.

“Taste my watermelon,” he called out to no one in particular. “We guarantee they’ll be as good as you ever ate. Get them and eat them for your health. We want you to be healthy and happy.”

Santa Fe Farmers Market Manager Shaun Adams said West has been coming to the market for about 30 of its 40 years, and is one of the few farmers allowed from outside the 15 counties of Northern New Mexico.

“His watermelon is such a good product that we have to (let him come to Santa Fe),” Adams added. “Being down south, they have slightly different farming season than we do.”

West’s wife, Leona Frances West, said they got involved with the Santa Fe Farmers Market after reading about it in New Mexico Magazine. Their oldest son, Kenneth West, drove up with a load of cantaloupes but wasn’t allowed to come in at first. “They said, ‘You stay right there. Don’t even get out of that pickup,’ ” she said. “But our cantaloupe, you can smell them everywhere. So people would come up and say, ‘I want to buy one.’ So they finally said, ‘OK, you can come in.’ ”

Most years, West sells cantaloupes, Crenshaws, Sharlyns and something he calls a Jake melon — similar to a cantaloupe but with softer, sweeter, juicier meat. But two hailstorms this summer wiped out most of the other types of melons, leaving “nothing but sticks laying there,” he said.

This year, the Wests have watermelons plus ostrich meat and eggs from 80 of the African birds on their 60-acre farm west of Fort Sumner. The drained eggs, West said, can be used to hold a red rose.

Jake, Leona Frances and their daughter Jana drive the 165 miles to Santa Fe on Saturdays. On Tuesdays, they go to Albuquerque to sell melons to Wild Oats. On Thursdays, they hit the Los Alamos Farmers Market in the morning and the south-side Santa Fe Farmers Market at Santa Fe Place in the afternoons.

But West, who has suffered a heart attack and a stroke, and has undergone one heart bypass and the installation of a pacemaker only last year, said he hopes his son-in-law, Bill Gray, decides to quit his welding job and take over the produce business next year. Leona Frances said she also is hoping this will be the last year.

“It better be,” she said. “If he wants to come next year, it’ll be just to visit and hug all the women.”

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.