One definition of the word ranch is: “a large farm used primarily to raise one kind of crop or animal.” A rancher is “a person who owns or works on a ranch.”
No matter what technique I use to determine whether a cantaloupe is ripe, it’s always hit or miss. Sometimes it’s ripe, more often it’s not. So here’s what I want to do to rectify the situation: invite a cantaloupe rancher to accompany me on my next trip to the grocery store or green grocer to buy cantaloupe; surely a cantaloupe rancher can teach me his or her surefire way for telling whether the melon is perfectly ripe.
Another definition of “Ranch”:
“Ranch” (noun): a derogatory expression primarily used as a demeaning remark; a colloquial reference, often referred to people who come from a ranch or from a ranching community.
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Down here rancho is just a little house and garden. Ranchito is an even smaller outfit. The OED thinks ranch in English s a hut or house in the country (1808). Why knew the word was so recent.
Softness helps with cantaloupe id, but too soft and/or wrinkled and the melon is past delicious.
News to me. I never bothered to look up the definition of “farmer” or “rancher”. I always thought a rancher raised cattle and a farmer crops or critters other than bovine. But the first 63 years of my life I also thought “peruse” meant to scan rapidly. I was wrong about that too. My method of checking a cantaloupes ripeness is to indent with my thumbnail the area where the stem connected to the melon and smell. If a strong sweet cantaloupe odor, the melon is ripe. I will admit that doesn’t always work. When you find the right way, please educate us.