Watermelon highway stall tempts customers from near and far ^Featured

Riwaka’s Frasers Orchard at the bottom of Takaka Hill sells apples, pears, sauce tomatoes, blueberries and Orchard View free-range eggs, but it's the juicy red and green melons that have the customers heading to the spot in droves.

Frasers Orchard staff member and owner’s daughter Carolyn Fraser said during the five to six-week supply of watermelons over February and March, the car park was “always full”, many of the customers doing an annual pilgrimage to the stall.

People travelled from Blenheim, Nelson and the West Coast, she said.

“A guy in Karamea comes up with his truck and loads them up and takes them back to all the locals.”

The melons are also sold at the Motueka Sunday Market, and Richmond's Raeward Fresh, but the price per kilo straight from the source is hard to beat.

Fraser said the melons, which varied in weight from two to six kilos, were fetching about $4 a kilo in supermarkets while the stall was selling them for half that.

“Watermelons are quite big, so even though $2 a kilo doesn't seem like a lot, by the time you have a 6kg watermelon, it makes it $12; still quite pricey.”

In December, Stuff reported there would be a shortage of watermelons this season due to biosecurity and logistical problems getting the fruit imported from Tonga and Queensland, which was expected to push prices up by 20 per cent.

A Countdown spokeswoman told Stuff the supermarket chain had a limited supply of Northland watermelons which were available at $6 a kilogram in its North Island stores.

In Riwaka, Fraser said they had “thousands” of watermelons available, and wouldn't be taking advantage of any supply shortage.

“Our customers come every year, so if you make it too expensive, families can’t afford it.”

The key to growing the hefty harvest was a lot of sunshine, she said, “which we haven’t had a lot of, that’s why [the season] is a bit late, probably a week later.

“Nice old Riwaka sunshine and some good old Riwaka water.”

The roadside stall has been going for 45 years over three generations of the Fraser family but watermelons have not always featured.

“When I was a kid Dad grew them, then he stopped for about 10 years, then he started up again and has been going for another 10 years now,” Fraser said.

“I remember me and my friends going up there and smashing them open and scooping out the watermelon on the rocks.”

But she said the best way to eat them was sliced, and they were especially good in Snaplock bags for kids’ lunches.

“I think most people like watermelons, but after a couple of weeks, we don’t like them any more because we eat them all day.”

- Stuff