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June 1, 2001

Melons are a

Family Affair...

The Wade Pennington farming operation is truly a family affair. (L-R, standing) Wade Pennington, Troy Pennington, Glynn Pennington, LaWanda Pennington, Aaron Pennington, Scott Talley, Russell Pennington, Stanley Pennington and Ross Pennington.

By Lana Robinson
Field Editor

Wade Pennington began farming in Houston County in 1940, spent the next four years in the service in World War II, and returned home to resume his agricultural interests, specializing in watermelons and growing a few peanuts. Over the next half century, Pennington's farming operation grew, with the help of his sons, Troy, Glynn, and Stanley. Today, three generations of Penningtons are carrying on the family tradition at Wade Pennington & Sons in Grapeland.

While watermelons are their stock and trade, the Penningtons have continued to diversify, adding cattle to their operation. Wade Pennington and his wife, Arvay, remain active in the family business. Troy's wife, La-Wanda, keeps books, manages accounts, and mans the phones. Troy and LaWanda's three sons have grown up working in the fields and peddling melons. Aaron, a junior at Baylor University, weighs, handles public relations, and runs the summer retail stand. Ross, who graduated from high school in May, is a crew manager, along with LaWanda's nephew, Scott Talley. And 14-year-old Russell Pennington works at picking time as a cutter, also training others to know when and how to cut melons.

"Daddy's the first one at this shed every morning," says Troy Pennington.

"I sell melons to the peddlers. Troy handles the wholesale accounts," Wade Pennington notes.

Although Troy went off to college at Sam Houston in 1966, he says he never quit farming.

"I had my own crop of watermelons. I graduated four years later, and the next day I was a full-time watermelon man. Glynn finished high school in 1961. He was already a partner. My brother Stanley, who is 10 years younger, also became a partner. After about 10 years, we talked LaWanda into coming to work for us, as a bookkeeper and collecting the money. Now Ross is a partner, a full-time farmer. Aaron says he's going to be a lawyer, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him right back here. It's in their blood," Troy speculates.

"It's an amazing family," says LaWanda. "These three brothers get along so well. Everybody works really well together."

Although each has an area of responsibility, the Penningtons are essentially interchangeable parts in this many-faceted operation. And they must be doing something right. The business sustains five families.

The Penningtons farm and run cattle on some 6,500 acres of owned and leased lands (55 different farms) within a five minute drive in just about every direction from Grapeland. They grow watermelons and cantaloupes on 500 acres, peanuts on about a thousand acres, enough sweet corn, tomatoes, and squash to sell at their retail watermelon stand downtown, and run registered Angus cattle on the rest.

"We rotate melons and peanuts with wheat. On watermelons, we're rotating coastal, love grass and bahia grass. We grow watermelons on the same ground every fifth year," says Troy. "Any land that's idle around Grapeland, I try to lease it. We have several good farms in our rotation."

Some melons are planted from transplants and some from seed at various intervals to ensure a steady supply throughout the summer, says Troy, noting that 90 percent of his seed this year came from China and transplants come from the Valley. Varieties are red, seeded and seedless, and a yellow-meated variety, Desert King.

"We grow Stars and Stripes, an all-sweet variety hybrid, Mirage and Jubilee. They're open pollinated. And we plant an Asgrow variety of seedless and an Abbott and Cobb seedless. We buy a lot of our seed from Wilhite Seed Company in Poolville," says Troy, explaining that a beehive per acre helps ensure pollination.

All melons are grown on plastic. Half of the melon crop is dryland and half is under drip irrigation. The Penningtons plant six rows and leave a load row.

"This year our dryland crop looks as good as the irrigated," says Troy. "We like to make 20,000 lbs. to the acre on irrigated. Of course, we hope for 40,000. We're satisfied with 10,000 lbs. on dryland. Last year, we had a very good watermelon crop."

The Penningtons are always experimenting with new varieties and techniques. They are trying some new products with some fairly good results aimed at combatting mosaic virus, which is a recurring problem in Houston County. The melon farmers spray for thrips. Troy says there is not much they can do about hail, except plant in every direction from town and hope if hail comes, it will miss some of the melons.

“Varmints are also a problem. We learned a long time ago to plant enough for all the varmints and all the people who climb the fence,” Troy jokes, adding that gophers chew on driplines.

In mid-May, hoeing and spraying were underway, and some of the Penningtons' melons were approaching 10 lbs. They are typically harvested at 20-25 lbs.

"What we can grow, we have people wanting them. Albertson's and Sam's (Wholesale Clubs) are going to get most of my seedless this year. Brookshire Bros. and Brookshire's use seeded varieties. We should have a small amount by June 5. We have a big crop set. We'll have more watermelons than we can handle between June 15 and the 10^th of July.

"We truck some. We supply our own trucks in East Texas, within 70 miles of Grapeland," Troy continues. "We have 34 bobtail trucks and sometimes all 34 are loaded here. We hire no crews to load. We load them ourselves. Daddy started that in 1970."

In the summer the Penningtons employ 60-70 people, all local, high school kids.

Each Pennington watermelon carries a guarantee. That's why great care is taken harvesting and loading.

"I can look at a watermelon_mine in the field_and can tell you if it's ripe and how much it weighs. You learn to tell by the stripe pattern, the plumpness. I don't have to touch it. I can just tell, from experience. I was my daddy's best cutter he had when I was 12. Russell and Ross are our best two cutters. They train the cutters. I've been doing it since I was four," says Troy.

Troy and Stanley Pennington serve on the Texas-Oklahoma Watermelon Board. Stanley has also served on the National Watermelon Promotion Board. Troy and LaWanda have been Farm Bureau members since they married 34 years ago.

Troy also serves on the Houston County Appraisal District, the Soil Conservation Board, the local hospital board and is president of the Grapeland Co-op.

The Penningtons also plant a small amount of sweet corn and tomatoes to complement their watermelons and cantaloupes at their produce stand.

The peanut was once King in Houston County, which continues to hold its annual peanut festival each second Saturday of October. This year marks the 56^th such event. Much of the local production has declined or moved to West Texas, and tomato-spotted wilt has driven out a few, but the Penningtons are sticking with their yearly ritual and planted Flo-runners and Spanish peanuts in mid May–both drip and dryland.

"We've been having a thousand acres, when we were doing skip row. We went back to solid-row this year and have about 650 acres," Troy reports. "It costs more to plant skip-row. We always made pretty good peanuts and planted them solid. Then we found we were getting as much on an acre of skip-row as solid planted, or at least we were until the last couple of years, when it turned off dry...We dry them here and send them to DeLeon, to Golden Peanut Company."

The usual practice, he says, is to put down herbicide, run soil tests, lime and fertilize, and then plant.

"First thing we do, ordinarily, is put out Storm. We get the weeds and nut grass in the row. We don't have a grass problem, just ragweeds. We burn that stuff down, cultivate and have a good fungicide. On the irrigated, we put gypsum. We're short of calcium. We put wheat on every acre and pasture it. We don't combine any. Wheat's just like corn. Right now, you can buy it cheaper than grow it," he says. "We feed all of our grain to our bulls. We put in 71 acres of corn in February 2000. This is the first year in my life we haven't grown corn, corn is so cheap. We chose not to. We put a pencil to it and could buy it and have it shipped here cheaper than we can grow it."

"We've been in this forever. We have 600 registered mother cows. Dad bought our first Angus cattle in 1948. We also have a commercial herd. I'm the one that got the paperwork started in the '70s to go registered," says Troy, who was president of the Texas Angus Association in 1997 and remains active in the organization.

According to Troy, Houston County was the largest feeder calf county in the state in 2000.

The Penningtons sell by private treaty and send a lot of their calves to a Kansas feedlot.