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THIS WEEK’S FRUIT

Crimson Lady Peaches
Frog Hollow Farm, Brentwood, CA
The Crimson Lady has a firm texture that is more springy than meltingly juicy. Good for eating out of hand but also make an excellent dried fruit. When dried, Crimson Lady are uniquely chewy and delicious.

Golden Sweet Apricots
Frog Hollow Farm, Brentwood, CA
Following on the heels of the Robada’s, the Golden Sweet is a smaller apricot that makes up for whatever it lacks in size with its rich flavor. Though we may bake pastries featuring other varieties, the Golden Sweet is our variety of choice for our best-selling apricot conserve. Another California born and bred variety, it has a brilliant golden orange skin with a soft blush.

A Note From Sarah (a co-owner)

Greetings CSA Members:

Last week we ended the newsletter with mention of our “value added” products. For us, value added is finding–or adding–value where there’s the potential of waste. We’ve talked about where the Farmer’s Market grade of fruit fits in the scheme of things, now let’s talk about Kitchen grade and how that increases our overall sustainability and profitability. The kitchen comes into action because this grade needs to be used sooner rather than later.

A decade or so ago, we saw a mountain of fruit wasting away. Becky utilized her kitchen talents to develop a line of preserves. She did so brilliantly, but not without hiccups. In order to sell her preserves we needed to prepare them in a licensed, commercial kitchen, which for us in Brentwood, meant driving into Berkeley off-hours (when the kitchens weren’t being used by their owners) and renting space. As I’m sure you can imagine, not ideal for us as farmers. Staying up all night cooking and creating recipes, then harvesting by day, it became clear we needed an on-site kitchen to take care of the fruit before it went bad. We got busy and fought with Contra Costa County to get the permits required (a story for another time…non-traditional ag building permits in an agriculture setting – aye, aye!).

As our trees matured and started producing even more fruit, we faced a new, bigger challenge: how to capture the sheer volume of fruit within such a short season (June through September). Enter the addition of a sub-zero, drive-in (note: I did NOT say walk-in… the thing is huge) freezer, so we could expand our value added throughout the year and put effort into adding products like dried fruit. Proper, ample storage allows for a multitude of really good things: for our crew, year round employment; for you, our CSA members, pastries, cakes and a plentiful supply of conserves
and dried fruit all embracing the taste of summer.
Toast freezers tonight at dinner! and add some of the conserves to your order if you haven’t tasted them yet. If you’ve got kids participating in summer sports programs, the dried fruit is an amazing, nutritious, energy boost! Fabulous for hiking and camping trips too!

Good Health you all!
-Sarah Coddington, co-owner