Word: melone
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Farmers have known for years that harvesting their produce at night can save time when ripening crops need to be rushed to market. But in California some enterprising melon growers are using the method to cut energy costs as well. Melons picked in the blazing California sun must first be cooled from 100° F or more down to 40° before the fruit can be packed and shipped. Electrical expenses for refrigeration alone can exceed $50,000 per season for a medium-size 5,000-acre farm. If the fruit is picked at night when the air cools...
Night harvesting can help in other ways. Melons age faster at higher temperatures. By picking them before they reach 100°, agronomists find the fruit has a longer shelf life at the grocery store. Working at night also keeps workers cool. Says Bart Fisher, who this year will harvest almost 90% of his melon crop at night: "There is a dramatic improvement in morale when the workers pick at night." After-hours in the melon fields is apparently one night-shift assignment that pleases workers and bosses alike...
WALLY IS UNQUESTIONABLY the inferior of the pair when it comes to appearances. Short and stout, with balding, frizzy hair that reveals a large melon of a forehead, he sits in marked contrast to Andre--tall, angular, and handsome. Like a baby squeezing a bathtub toy, Andre can play on Wally, eliciting a sputtering high-pitched squeal...
Some carried tape measures, trowels, putty knives, melon ballers and plant misters. Mostly, the 1,500 people who turned out on Steep Hill Beach in Ipswich, Mass., for the eighth annual sand castle competition were armed with buckets and shovels-the basic tools for molding an uncooperative medium into an image of their fantasies. Among the sculptures were a baby elephant, a dragon and a splendid 14-ft lobster, spray-painted red and accompanied by "melted butter." Six Cambridge artists fashioned the crustacean, and called it Lobster Plate Special $5.95. The purists stuck to castles. Boston Designer Jeff Nathan marshaled...
...more powerful pesticide. Next day the number of trapped flies dropped sharply. But farm officials recognized the difficulty of eliminating an insect that can produce 500 or more offspring in a month-long lifetime. In Modesto, not far from San Joaquin's lush fields, where tomato, peach and melon crops are now ripening, one had this to say about the tiny foe: "It's probably some place out there already and we just don't know...