Royal Slope's John Loos cornered the market

ROYAL CITY - Herbie Hancock could have been thinking ahead to John Loos of the Royal Slope when he wrote the bright and catchy jazz composition "Watermelon Man" in 1962.

Or maybe Loos was thinking back to Hancock when he decided in 1999 to develop a watermelon operation that has grown beyond his own imagination. He could be called the Watermelon Man of Royal Slope.

Like most business people, farmers hope for a their fair share of a market. But they'll settle for a niche market they can command. That is John Loos.

Loos started farming in 1983, a couple of years before graduating from Washington State University. He raised wheat and dry beans in those days on rented land around Royal City and Othello.

In the late 1990s it started to become difficult to rent land. So Loos started to contemplate crops that produced higher yields on smaller acreages.

In 1999 Loos decided to give watermelons a shot. He had learned a grower could produce 30 marketable tons per acre.

Loos planted 60 acres on rented ground around Othello. He liked the results and geared up for a bigger 2000.

On land rented from his parents and neighbors on the Royal Slope, he planted 110 acres that year. This year he planted 250 acres.

Loos acknowledges he has the largest watermelon operation in these parts, but he says there is one larger in the Pasco area. His biggest buyers are Costco and Winco and a large Canadian market.

"We're closer to Canada than California is," he said.

Loos makes his melons, and the few cantaloupes he raises, available to the local market at a fruit stand next to the packing house. Both are located at Highway 26 and Highway 262.

The current harvest started July 13 and will end after the first week of September. It takes about 50 people who can handle the high summer heat to harvest, pack and ship the crop. The intense operation requires up to, and sometimes more than 12 hours a day.

"We try not to work on Sundays," Loos said.

The reason for all of the hours is the crop. It is big, and there are new, ripe melons every day. Once the harvest starts, there is no stopping until September.

Trucks leave the yard regularly with full loads of marketing bins that hold 700 pounds each. That's a lot of picking and packing every day.

The price for melons this year is hanging around 20 cents a pound. It takes 14-15 cents for a grower to break even.

"This year's pretty good," Loos said. "But some years we've been killed by the weather, and we got only 40 percent of a crop."

The Loos Watermelon operation takes only about 10 employees in the early part of the year. Planting about 10 acres a day, Loos takes about six weeks to plant the entire crop. That spreads out the germination, maturation and harvest over a long period of time.

"You can't store watermelons, and you can't sell them all in one day," Loos said.

Loos planted the Fascination, Exclamation, Maximum and Secretariat varieties of watermelons this year. Fascination is the one people want the most and the one of which Loos plants the most.

As usual, Loos also planted tomatoes and peppers this year. He grew 12 acres of cantaloupes. And he raised 300 acres of hay.

But no one is going to call him "Pepper Man" or "Tomato Man." They don't really have that jazzy twang Hancock used, and "Hay Man" makes absolutely no musical sense.

Loos is the Watermelon Man. That is his niche.