A NOTE FROM FARMER AL
Dear CSA Members, Demand for our dried fruit has really taken off in just this past year. And we don’t even sell it wholesale! Only to our retail customers like you, our CSA members, at the farmers’ markets and at our shop at the Ferry Building. So we’ve increased our production in every type of fruit. Our production manager, Jose, has been doing this for almost 20 years now, and he is really an artisan in this field. He takes great pride in the quality and micro-managing every aspect of the process with each year adding more refinements and improvements. The thing he really understands is the fruit itself. We have at least 30 variet- ies of peaches, maybe 10-15 varieties of nectarines, several varieties of plums and pluots, 10 varieties of apricots, etc….and not all varieties are created equal. After years of observation he will only dry certain varieties. For example, in the peach category, the best dried peaches are made with only Flavorcrest, Crim- son Lady, Suncrest, and Cal Reds. Fortunately our production of these variet- ies should be enough to provide very ripe fruit for the sky-rocketing dried fruit demand. By the way, you should know that one reason our dried fruit is so sweet and tasty is the very same reason our fresh fruit is so good…we pick our fruit riper than any other farm dares to! We’re always “pushing the envelope” on how ripe we pick all of our fruit here, and so inevitably much of it (20-30%) is picked too ripe for shipping. This is the sweetest of our fruit. We call it “Farmers Market” grade or “Kitchen” grade. The farmers’ market grade is still good enough for local sales direct to the end user, such as you, our CSA members. The kitchen grade fruit is either slightly damaged or too ripe to transport. This is the fruit we send to Jose. Jose has his crew peel the peaches before drying. Then, using neither sulfur nor any additives of any kind, he has his crew carefully place each piece (1/2 fruit) on a screened tray which we designed and built ourselves. After 2-3 days of drying on one side, we turn over every piece of fruit to dry on the other side for another 1-2 days, depending on the weather. This intensive hand labor and attention to detail is unheard of in the world of ag, which is obsessed with always trying to reduce costs….almost always at the expense of quality. My hat is off to Jose, with heartfelt appreciation for the passion he brings to his work.