Werline melons

Ray Werline has a specialty. It’s growing watermelons. Big ones. From his four acres of land in Cass County near Linden, he grows melons even for others to come to his field to harvest and sell on their own.

Recently, Werline entered the heaviest melon for the Naples Watermelon Festival. That melon weighed in at 143 pounds.

But that’s not his recent best. He keeps a picture on his cell phone of a 164-pounder that seems to be as big as the farmer himself.

Werline not only grows but also gathers the melons and does so still by hand.

“In a seven to eight-day period recently, we gathered about 1,000 melons,” he said.

To highlight the Naples Watermelon Festival, free slices of cold watermelon are given out to the festival celebrants. For this, Werline provides some 500 melons and has done so for eight to ten years. In honor of this, he was made grand marshal of the festival this year.

The 1976 graduate of Linden-Kildare calls himself a retired farmer who has no secrets about growing watermelons.

“It depends on the rain. This year we were almost getting too much rain. Most of the ones I have this year are of the Jubilee variety, and we’re a little late with them.” Werline can be seen in Linden, perhaps, two to three days a week with a trailer of melons. In the shade of a tree along Highway 11 in Linden, he greets customers with a friendly and strong handshake. He’s willing to talk to anyone about watermelons. He’s Cass County’s champion melon grower and has been for more than a decade.