From the farm to the track: Chastain puts watermelons in the spotlight

Ross Chastain started the NASCAR season with a watermelon and it traveled with him from track to track. The fruit lasted five weeks before “The Watermelon Man” had to refresh its supply.

The eighth generation watermelon farmer from Florida didn’t call home and asked his family to send a fresh melon to Austin, Texas for the first road run of the season. He walked towards the store.

“We buy them at the grocery store, like everyone else does,” Chastain said. “My food comes from the grocery store, and our watermelons for NASCAR Cup Series victories do too.”

Rarely have watermelons been showcased the way they were on Sunday when Chastain won his first career Cup race. In his 121st career start, Chastain was finally able to climb onto a Cup car and swipe a watermelon from the roof of his Chevy to celebrate the win.

The 29-year-old then grabbed a piece of broken watermelon on the asphalt at the Circuit of the Americas and took a hearty bite. Chastain carried that slice of watermelon through all of his victory bonds, a true symbol of how far he has come in his career.

“I don’t know how to treat it yet. I’m sitting here, and I’m watching this (watermelon) and thinking back to the stories of our family,” Chastain said after his aggressive battle with former teammate AJ Allmendinger in the final round of overtime that won him, as well as at Trackhouse Racing, their first victories.

The Chastain family first settled in Georgia until Chastain’s great-grandfather moved to Punta Gorda, Florida. JDI Farms began when his great-grandfather finished his military service and has been passed down through several generations.

The farm is currently run by Chastain’s father, Ralph, and brother, Chad. The family has five full-time employees — so yes, Chastain has to farm when he’s at home in Florida — and an outside crew is used to plant, water and harvest.

“My father and uncle have become old enough to cultivate on their own. They developed the farm to an amazing location,” Chastain said. “We just focused on watermelons as a family business. It started eight generations ago. Really before that, 12 generations ago, they were farming, but back then everyone was farming. We stayed there, for better or for worse, and every generation has stayed with that.”

Chad Chastain is also his brother’s watcher; if he is at the track, their father cannot attend the race. Susan Chastain is a traveling nurse and nervously paced the Trackhouse stand on Sunday holding her breath as her son closed in on his maiden victory.

“If Chad comes to the race, my dad stays behind, and if my dad comes to the race, Chad stays back; if the boss is away, the mice will play, right? Chatain said. “You have to stay on everyone, and the plants are in the ground, and we will start harvesting in a few weeks. It’s time to grow the watermelons.

As he gazed at the slice of crushed watermelon that represented his Cup victory, Chastain was able to find parallels in the family business and his own rocky rise to the highest levels of NASCAR. He was 18 when he made his Truck Series debut and despite making 410 starts in NASCAR’s three National Series, Chastain has only raced eight full seasons since his debut in 2011.

Its trajectory has been a series of starts, stops and searches for sponsors. When he finally hit the jackpot with the promise of season-long support from DC Solar, the FBI raided the company as part of an investigation into the Ponzi scheme. The company’s collapse came just days after Pitbull was hired by DC Solar to play its Christmas party; Chastain now rides for Trackhouse, a team part-owned by Pitbull.

Chastain raced his first full Cup season with Chip Ganassi Racing last year, then landed the second seat at Trackhouse when he purchased Ganassi’s NASCAR operation ahead of this season. He now has a spot in the 16-driver playoff field and heads to Richmond for Sunday’s race, ranked fifth in the career standings.

Even so, he never goes too far beyond the work the rest of his family does on the farm. The JDI, by the way, stands for “Just. Do. This.” in a play on the famous Nike slogan.

Crop insurance does not exist for watermelon growers in Florida, Chastain said, and that has limited the number of producing farms to less than 10.

“Thinking back to farming and then tying that to racing, how my career has gone…and talking about watermelons on a national level, talking about farming in a positive light,” Chastain said. “It’s a very small number of people in the world who grow the crops that feed this world and feed this people all over the world, so it’s a thankless job for the farmers. The real farmers. I’m just the one who talk about now, but I think for farmers and little racers around the world, this is a big win.

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