Family business growing

COYANOSA The 2011 cantaloupe harvest is a bit different for Mandujano Brothers Produce.

The family-owned business has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in new equipment for the cantaloupe harvest, which began two weeks ago on 200 acres between Pecos and Fort Stockton.

A new mechanical harvester allows 17 of their 60 laborers to place melons on a conveyor belt as they walk through the fields. The belt then delivers the cantaloupes to a trailer that moves along with the workers. Beto Mandujano, one of four brothers who own the company in the Pecos County community of Coyanosa, said this keeps the workers from having to drop the melons in a bag, which they lug around on their backs until they can deposit them into a trailer.

“It’s a lot more efficient than the bags,” Beto Mandujano, 34, said. “They picked up maybe 40 acres in three hours.”

Each acre can produce between 30,000 and 40,000 pounds of cantaloupes during a season, which is expected to continue until September, he said. The workers go over each acre every day once the melons ripen, picking those that are ready and leaving those that still need time to grow.

Along with help in the field, the brothers have a new refrigeration system that keeps their Pecos Fresh brand melons at 40 degrees in a 60-by-70 foot building. Beto Mandujano said this can increase shelf life by several days over storing them in the 100-plus degree West Texas sun.

Co-owner Tony Mandujano, 40, said getting the new equipment has been a long-time goal for the family, which started the farm in 1997, expanding on the farming their family had done in the area for years. As other farmers have left the soil along the Pecos River, which is said to produce the sweetest cantaloupes around, the brothers have grown their business.

“You have to get your feet wet, get punched in the face a few times,” Tony Mandujano joked. “I hear a lot of news reports that Pecos cantaloupe is non-existent. We’ve been growing since we first moved out here in ‘79. Our plan is to keep growing it.”

Along with cantaloupes, the brothers dedicate hundreds of acres to watermelon and onion crops.

Though record drought conditions have devastated much West Texas agriculture, cantaloupe growers have actually seen benefits. The melons are watered using drip irrigation from below the ground, which Beto Mandujano said allows the soil to remain dry on the surface. Rain leads to mud, making it more difficult for workers to pick the cantaloupes, and for machinery to get into the fields.

“Cantaloupes, you’ve got to pick ‘em every day, and when it rains it can throw you off,” he said.

He said the hot, dry conditions can actually help make the melons taste sweeter.

Junior Bowden of Grandfalls made his third trip of the new season Thursday to the Mandujanos’ fruit stand on FM 1776 to get a sack full of cantaloupes along with some watermelons.

“They’re sweet and tender,” he said of the cantaloupes. “And these watermelons are just as good. I bought four of them the other day, and I’m buying four more.”

Others come to Coyanosa to get melons to sell at their own fruit stands, or out of the back of a truck.

Ben Rodriguez has been buying melons from the Mandujanos to sell in Artesia and Carlsbad in New Mexico for more than 30 years, he said.

“The best cantaloupe and watermelon in the valley,” Rodriguez said.

Along with stores like Walmart in Odessa and Midland and Albertsons in San Angelo, the Mandujanos say they are selling cantaloupes at Walmart in the Dallas area and Kroger in Houston.

“They want ‘em,” Beto Mandujano said, just before taking a call from a man who planned to drive from San Antonio to buy some cantaloupes. “They’re good cantaloupes and they want ‘em.”

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