Follow
Summerset Peaches
The Summerset matures into a very large peach, some weighing in at more than two pounds! Bright yellow with hardly no blush to speak of, the Summerset is a freestone that boasts a bold flesh that has a strong peach flavor. Sweet and juicy but with a tart, acidic bite, it makes for a nice contrast as a follow-up to the extremely sweet Cal Red. The Summerset has a nicely firm texture that freezes well and is a favorite of ours to bake with.
Flavor King Pluots
A dark-skinned pluot with red flesh, it has an intense rich flavor combined with sweet, spicy tones that are reminiscent of the Santa Rosa. A nice acid bite and firm texture that softens beautifully as the fruit continues to ripen, the Flavor King is amazing out of hand and equally good for baking.
Hosui Asian Pears
The Hosui is popular in both Japan and in California. They have a rough, thick skin with flesh that while still crunchy has a more melting mouthful, making the texture combination when eaten out of hand spectacular. Very juicy and sweet with a milder pear taste, their round shape and beautiful golden hue make them ideal for presentation with a distinctively Autumnal feel.
Flame Seedless Grapes
Firm, large, and sweet the Flame Seedless are one of the most popular varieties in North America. Enjoy these out of hand or try them in green salads, chicken salads, or fruit salads.
Dear CSA Members,
When I was a child growing up with my 4 younger brothers on Cedar Street in Berkeley, my Mom and Dad used to exhort us at the dinner table “eat everything on your plate! Think of all those children starving in China!” Well today, those children in china are doing great, but here in America kids are not doing so well and it’s because of the way we eat. Its’ easy to get kids to eat “white food” or heavily processed foods like bread, mac ‘n cheese, sugar, etc. but not it’s not so easy to get them to eat veggies or even fruit. Highly processed foods have become the norm and the standard by which all food quality is judged.
Yesterday at the Ferry Building Farmers market a woman said to me she had made special a trip to the Ferry Building market just to get Frog Hollow Farm fruit, even though there is another farmers’ market right there in her Noe Valley neighborhood. She then remembered “even the Frog Hollow fruit at the grocery store doesn’t taste as good as the fruit you bring to the Farmers’ Market!”
She had no idea the irony of that remark! Exactly one week before, on Friday 8/17 I received a call from one of our major wholesale buyers. We had shipped 10 pallets of Cal Reds on Thursday and he was calling to tell me that they were rejected due to “bruising and soft shoulder”. So, we sent 2 trucks to pick them up at their warehouse in SF, brought them back to the farm and repacked every single piece of fruit (removing the so-called bruised and soft ones) and then we re-shipped the harder, less ripe ones back to wholesale warehouse.
It is exactly the kind of experience that drives the whole fruit industry down to the lowest common denominator of eating quality, ripeness and flavor. It’s why most American kids will only eat “white food”; they’ve been trained them to.
This wholesale example illustrates millions of tons of perfectly good wholesome foods that get dumped into the landfills or on farms. It is because we as a people are wasteful with our food and we have an unsustainable food system. We “cherry pick” (forgive the pun) our food by eating only what is cosmetically perfect and tossing aside anything else at a huge cost to our health and our economy.
The whole idea of CSA is to create more sustainable as well as nutritious food system. I give thanks to our CSA members for your support of these values and this vision.
