HEMPSTEAD, Texas – An old-time farmer has turned to the Internet to help his sagging business.
Dale Flukinger of Flukinger Farms has been a farmer all his life. He grows watermelons now, and barely broke even last year because of the drought.
This year, the crop exploded. Flukinger said he has so many melons that they're getting too large and too ripe to eat. With the help of his son-in-law, Flukinger turned to the Internet for help.
"He did it for me, because I'm not a Craigslist kind of guy. Then he took it onto Facebook, and we've had a pretty good response," said Flukinger.
He made a video of himself firing a shotgun into a watermelon. The melon explodes into chunks as Fulkinger and the camera operator flinch to avoid them. That video was posted to YouTube.
"My son-in-law wanted me to make a clip 'Flukinger melons blow you away,' and we had to blow one away", Flukinger said.
The mangled melon video brought in more business, and Fulkinger said he re-learned the age-old farming lesson that there's no magic bullet to a booming business.
"It's luck and Mother Nature, and that's all it is. You can't control the timing of when they are going to get rip," Fulkinger said.
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