August 1 is a traditional holiday among Gaelic peoples (Scottish, Irish, Welsh), who at this time of year observe Lughnasadh (LOO-nus-uh) as a celebration of first fruits. I have a special fondness for our American Thanksgiving, which marks the end of harvest season, but I can also appreciate the impulse to move the good times forward by several weeks. Over the years, as my commitment to supporting local farmers markets has deepened, the concept of first fruits has taken on new meaning. Almost every week during middle and late summer, when some variety of local produce makes a welcome debut in the market stalls after a seemingly interminable absence, it truly feels like cause for celebration.

An essential part of my spiritual practice is being mindful of the seasons and rhythms of the natural world, an awareness nurtured by intimate acquaintance with the cycle of goods available at the farmers market. The little town where I live, just outside of Washington, DC, has one of the oldest and best farmers markets in the area. It runs year-round and admits only growers who use certifiably organic or pesticide-free practices. I was raised a vegetarian for religious reasons and have remained one for nutritional, ecological, and political reasons, but my weekly pilgrimage for provisions has a definite spiritual element. The farmers market is my Temple of Earthly Delights, wellspring of the fresh fruits and vegetables that provide most of my sustenance.

Shopping there regularly can be very educational for someone who is observant and takes time to get to know the farmers. You learn that locally grown delicacies like asparagus and raspberries are only in season for a few short weeks, so you must overindulge while you can. You find out that you have to wait until early July for local corn, and that after nine months of spurning wan supermarket tomatoes, or splurging on expensive packets of grape tomatoes, having to wait until late July or even August for local heirloom tomatoes pushes the limits of endurance. You learn the true cost of food from talking with farmers prematurely creased by the sun, their fingers permanently stained with dirt. You learn about the knife-edge business of farming from the grower whose entire harvest was wiped out by an unscrupulous vendor who sold him contaminated compost. And in the winter, when pickings are reduced to apples, root vegetables, cabbage, and maple syrup, you appreciate our ancestors’ reliance on the skills of fermenting, canning, pickling, and distilling to make provisions last through the lean times.

If you’re committed to buying locally and seasonally as much as possible, you know that year-round availability of every variety of produce, a luxury that we have come to expect, is actually an artificial construct of global agribusiness. A true locavore does without cheaper, and generally inferior, off-season imports, holding out until locally grown fruits and vegetables are in season in order to support small farms and more sustainable practices. That’s how it works in theory anyway, and I give it a good shot, I really do. But I’m only human, with yearnings and temptations like everybody else. Call me a part-time, fair-weather locavore, but sometimes I slip up—and live to regret it.

Take my weakness for watermelon. My gustatory longing for this summertime treat is largely a product of nostalgia. I can’t believe I’m old enough to begin a sentence with the words “kids today don’t know squat about…,” but really, their minds have been warped by what passes for watermelon these days. For all they know, watermelons have always been perfectly round and chastely seedless. But when I was growing up in the dusty Central Valley of California, watermelons were huge, torpedo-shaped monsters that you had to either eat at one sitting or help your mother chop down into ham-sized slabs that would fit into the spare refrigerator in the garage. These serious investments in fruit were not something your mother could carry home in a sissy little carrier bag. This was man’s work! Like a caveman schlepping a carcass across the burning savannah to feed the wife and cavelets, your dad lugged the family watermelon from the back of the station wagon into the house by hoisting it onto one shoulder and securing it with a steady hand. We WASPS may not have had bar mitzvahs to mark the passage to manhood, but boys knew they had achieved new status within the tribe when their dads ordered, “Son, carry that watermelon into the house for your mother.”

My favorite kind of melon, the striped variety we called “rattlesnake” watermelons, were chock full of hard black seeds encased in slippery little sacs. Kids today don’t have the opportunity to learn manual dexterity by prying a zillion of these seeds out of a slice of watermelon with a fork without sacrificing a morsel of juicy flesh. And they’ll never know the intricate art and exquisite thrill of spitting a watermelon seed with such speed and accuracy that it’s wedged tightly in their brother’s ear canal before he knows what hit him. These seminal experiences were irretrievably lost when watermelon was reengineered from the Godzilla of summer fruit to pale pink chunks of fruit-like substance on the salad buffet.

These memories of summer bounty are what stir me to foolishly abandon locavore ethics around late spring and buy one of those round watermelon wannabes, imported from Texas or Florida or Mexico, that start spilling out of huge cardboard corrals in the supermarket before Memorial Day. This year I didn’t make it past early June before eagerly slicing into my first supermarket watermelon, listening for the crisp, sharp crackle of a perfectly ripened specimen. But this one gave way to my knife with nothing more than a hollow grunt, exposing pale, mealy flesh to my disappointed gaze. I can forgive watermelons their cute roundness, and I don’t honestly pine for all those seeds, but I can not, will not, abide mealy flesh. I ate most of that first out-of-state imposter out of sheer frugality, but didn’t waste any guilt tossing the last uneaten wedge into the garbage bin. The next week I took a gamble on a cannonball-sized variety, coyly christened a “personal” watermelon, on the assumption that something that small couldn’t have had time to go bad. But the flesh inside was an odd orange color and as grainy as pea soup. I put it out for the birds and squirrels, who clearly have less discerning palates.

By 4th of July weekend I was so hungry for decent watermelons, they were making disturbing appearances in my dreams. The farmers market was on Sunday, an exceptionally hot and muggy day that also coincided with my town’s 4th of July Parade, an extravaganza of local politicians grinning cheesily from vintage convertibles, fat Shriners careening in kiddie cars, and ornately clad representatives of every school, club, and fire department for miles around. The blocked-off street that hosts the market abuts the parade route, so parking in my usual spot by the bank, or anywhere near the stalls for that matter, was out of the question. There had been no local watermelons for sale at the market the week before, and there was no guarantee that a vendor would have them on offer this early in the summer. Given these obvious drawbacks, it would have been prudent to wait another week to satisfy my craving, but prudence had not been cast in this drama. A melon quest, after all, is about passion.

That Sunday I planned my line of approach with military precision, checking a street map for routes to the farmers market that would skirt the parade route and land me in an area of town that likely had street parking. The only possibility was a neighborhood at least a quarter of a mile away and steeply downhill from the market. It was just past 10 a.m. but the temperature had already climbed into the high, humid nineties. I figured with a wide hat and a canteen of water, I could trudge a quarter of a mile uphill if I paced myself. But if I did find a suitable melon, I worried, how would I carry it back such a distance to my car? As I squeezed my Saturn into a tiny space on the curb and petitioned the parking fairies not to let anyone notice that my back bumper jutted eight inches into someone’s driveway, I figured my only option was the granny cart. I keep this shiny blue concession to advancing age folded up in the trunk of my car for those occasions when the Whole Foods parking lot is jam-packed, forcing me to an upper level of the parking garage across the street. Today was another of those times, I decided, when I’d have to look like a dork to get what I wanted.

I stopped frequently on the uphill trek to rehydrate and wipe drops of sweat from my eyelids, and to wonder how stupid you had to be to indulge in self-torture for an uncertain reward. Finally, up ahead I caught sight of the colorful market pavilions, heard the urgent wail of a freshly polished fire engine on parade, followed by the flatulent drone of a dozen bagpipes, and thought, “There’d better be one hell of a watermelon in one of those stalls.”

As I crested the hill, I figured my best bet was the vendor at the far end of the market, the one who always had the first sweet corn for sale. If he didn’t have watermelons this week, then all my sweaty strategizing would have been for naught and it would be another week of California nectarines or cold-storage apples for lunch. I wheeled my cart past farmers selling colorful piles of fresh greens, young beets, snap peas, early cherry tomatoes, and organic eggs and cheese, until I came to the end of the row where the corn vendor always sets up shop. I wiped more sweat from my eyes and saw, to my extreme delight, wedged between the big corn bin and the folding tables laden with blueberries, wax beans, and rhubarb, a cardboard box the size of a baby’s playpen bearing a hand-lettered sign that said, “Watermelons.” Underneath, in smaller letters that looked slightly apologetic, was the word “seeded.”

I peeked over the edge of the box, which was only half full so early in the season, and saw a jumble of dark green watermelons roughly the size of bowling balls. They were dusted with sandy soil, and each sported a curly pigtail stem that was still plump and green, having been cut that very morning from a vine on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, just two hours away over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. First fruits indeed!

A few hours later, when it was nicely chilled, this perfect local melon submitted to a sharp knife with a crack like a pistol shot. I cut one of the halves into quarters, then sliced a thick triangular wedge from the end of one piece. Standing over the kitchen sink, I gobbled the object of my craving without a fork, spitting the seeds into the sink strainer and letting the juice dribble down both sides of my chin. I ate the sweet red fruit down to its tart white border, the crescent of rind smooshed against my face like a succulent grin.