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THIS WEEK’S FRUIT

 Hass Avocado
Eco Farm, Temecula, CA
Creamy in texture, nutty in flavor, with a small to medium seed. The Hass skin is easy to peel and darkens from green to purplish-black as it ripens.

Fuji Apple
Cuyama, New Cuyama,CA
Fujis are a cross between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet, an heirloom apple dating back to Thomas Jefferson. They are one of the sweetest variety apples around making them a household favorite.

Navel Orange
Rainbow Valley, Rainbow, CA
California Navel Oranges are considered to be the best Navels for eating out of hand. They have a thick skin that is easy to peel, are seedless and have a meaty and sweet flesh that makes them a perfect snack.

Star Ruby Grapefruit
Apricot Lane, Moorpark, CA
The Grapefruit is said to be a cross between the Jamaican sweet orange and the Indonesian pomelo, first documented in 1750. Under its thick, red-blushed skin you’ll find an aromatic, ruby red, juicy flesh with a perfect sweet tart flavor.

Flame Grapefruit
Apricot Lane, Moorpark, CA
The Grapefruit is said to be a cross between the Jamaican sweet orange and the Indonesian pomelo, first documented in 1750. The skin of the Flame has a more yellow hue than the Ruby Grapefruit, but you’ll still find the same aromatic juicy flesh with a perfect sweet tart flavor inside.

A NOTE FROM FARMER AL

Abounding Apricots

Dear CSA Members,

It’s going to be a really good year for cots! It’s probably the best year ever in terms of diversity, abundance, and longevity; earliness, too. We’re thinning a very large crop of the Apaches, our very first fruit of the season, now. This is atleast 10 days -2 weeks earlier than we’ve ever thinned them, so I’m projecting the earliest harvest ever, probably April 23rd (Shakespeare’s birthday and my Mom’s birthday!)

It’s the day of that big storm they’ve been talking about and sure enough, it has arrived. Not a whole lot of rain yet for us, but it’s very cold and lots of wind. While my ground crew is not working, nor my tractor crew, the tree team is out there thinning as we speak. The trees are mostly young, and today they’re finishing the Apaches and moving on to the Kettleman varieties, which are still younger trees, not requiring a ladder to be thinned. I don’t like having them working in the rain, not only because of the risk of slipping off a ladder, but also because of the compaction of the soil that happens when you walk on clay soil when it’s wet. But all this recent rain has put us weeks behind on our work, especially the pruning.

So…we’re working in the rain.

And…we’re thankful for the rain.

But, mostly, we’re thankful for this amazing apricot crop. I hope you all love them as much as I do, because it’ll be nonstop apricots from late April to late June. We have twelve different varieties of them in total.

Dig out your Apricot recipes!

Regards,
Farmer Al