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March 28, 2024 4:52 pm
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RURAL RANTS: A Taste Of The West

By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

The Mojave Desert is 25,000 square miles of mostly dirt, desolation and dryness.

The high desert area covers parts of California, Arizona and, of course, all of Clark County in Nevada. I would imagine from space the vast rocky expanse appears as if the creator dropped a dollop of wet sand on the North American continent and then absentmindedly left it to dry, harden and crack into innumerable flat, dusty plains interrupted occasionally by tall parched mountains and river-filled valleys of green.

It is rugged, arid and glorious.

For the uninitiated, the Mojave Desert is a scalding hot expanse of barrenness that forces us puny humans into air conditioned boxes of wood and concrete. A somewhat bitter pill for those more inured to cooler, greener pastures elsewhere.

Barrenness and bitter are definitely not the only words that can be used to describe the Mojave Desert, however, far from it, especially if you talk to the Bundy family of Riverside in the Virgin Valley.

Cliven and Carol Bundy are more apt to use words like fertile, succulent, juicy, sweet and luscious. And luckily for the rest of us, the Bundys are more accurate, at least in the fall of the year.

Every autumn, on their 160-acre farm near Mesquite, the Bundys grow and sell the most magnificent, sweetest, and juiciest melons you can find anywhere on earth, let alone just the Mojave Desert. They produce crenshaws, casabas, watermelons, honey dews, cantaloupes and more including Bundy Melons, a hybrid that can take your breath away it’s so delicious.

Cliven says his parents began growing melons along the Virgin River in the 1940’s and melons have been part of his life ever since. He just never stopped farming them. He still uses generations of seeds that came from the melon crops the pioneers planted and over the years has isolated those that are the best tasting and sweetest.

Cliven says there’s just something about the Mojave Desert soil, something about the Virgin River water up there in Riverside that turns those pale little seeds into splendor, the melons he sells.

He insists his melons taste different, taste better because they come from old seeds. He may be right. Even the Mojave Desert wildlife loves his produce.

This year the Bundys have been fighting off a veritable army of wild scavengers that have been running rampant in the melon field. Coyotes, badgers, skunks, foxes and crows have played havoc with this year’s crop.

Hard to believe, but true. Those varmints get into the melons and eat or ruin a lot of produce. Seems Bundy Melons are famous throughout the Mojave.

Nevertheless, Cliven and Carol, daughter Stetesy, 18, and son Arden, 12, the only kids still at home, have a lot of sweet melons for sale.

And melons aren’t the only sweet thing the Bundys are selling this year. This year there’s also tubs and jars and containers full of a remarkable Mojave Desert honey produced by bees that spend a lot of time in hives on the Bundy farm from February to June. There’s dark honey and light honey, both of which have a distinct compelling flavor. It’s delicious.

The Bundys call their melons and honey “Taste of the West.”

The name also covers beef raised on the farm, and butchered and wrapped at a USDA approved shop in Utah that they sell in 35-pound boxes. Raised largely on the open range eating sweet Mojave Desert foliage, the yearling stock is grain-finished on the farm.

To get a “Taste of the West” from the Bundy farm, take the Riverside/Bunkerville exit off I-15 (Exit 112), turn right on Gold Butte Road and follow the signs.

It’ll be a truly sweet experience.

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