In the early 1940s, David’s maternal great grandfather Earl W. Merritt began farming honeydew melons in Arvin, California. Prior to owning land to farm, Earl traveled up and down California during the harvest seasons as a migrant farmworker on various fruit and vegetable crops. After many hard years of working and saving, Earl realized his American Dream and purchased his own ground to farm, settling on the outskirts of Porterville and Terra Bella around 1945. Four generations later, David works alongside his uncles, aunts, brothers and cousins to sustain the family farm known today as  E.W. Merritt Farms.