Reporting from Onyx — Thirteen years ago, when Ruben Mkrtchyan told his wife and four children that they were going to move from Glendale to a high desert valley in the middle of nowhere to grow the world’s tastiest melons, they thought he had lost his mind.
“My mom and I looked at each other and said, ‘What is he talking about?’ ” recalls his daughter Tatevik. “When we went up there, the land was completely empty, just Joshua trees and scrub.”