This Week’s Fruit

Hass Avocados Las Palmalitas, Carpinteria, 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. You can tell it is ripe by the color of the skin (dark) and if it yields to pressure. Pink Lady Apples & Fuji Apples Cayuma Orchards, New Cayuma, CA A cross between the Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, the Pink Lady is a crisp and juicy apple with a tart finish. A creamy white colored flesh that resists browning makes this an excellent apple for salads and slicing. Also a modern day favorite for eating out of hand. A cross between the Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, the Pink Lady is a crisp and juicy apple with a tart finish. A creamy white colored flesh that resists browning makes this an excellent apple for salads and slicing. Also a modern day favorite for eating out of hand. Fujis are a cross between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet, an heirloom apple dating back to Thomas Jeffrson. Fujis are loved by many for their crisp, sweet, and juicy character. Hayward Kiwi Chiechi Farms, Live Oak, CA Originally known as the Chinese gooseberry due to its Chinese orgins. Hawyward Wright, a New Zealand nurseryman propagated his plants by grafting and they eventually became the preferred cultivar of growers due to their sweet flavor and thin skin. Navel Oranges Etheridge Farm, Dinuba, 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. Navels are also great for juicing and cooking. Moro Blood Oranges Frog Hollow Farm, Brentwood, CA A beautiful orange to deep red flesh is revealed when you slice open a Tarocco. The flesh of the blood orange is firmer and more dense than an orange and its flavor is a little more tart. These beauties sweeten and darken in color as the season progresses.

A Note from Farmer Al

Dear CSA Members, The packing shed team finished building our new greenhouse this week and it looks great. Not too large, it’s about 15 feet long, 10 feet deep, and 10 feet high with enough tables and shelves to place a couple thousand tomato seedlings. We’ve got about 700 seedlings of 12 varieties of heirlooms which we’re growing specifically for you our CSA members. We moved them from their temporary location in our marketing office to their next, new, temporary home in the greenhouse, where we’ll continue to grow them until it’s time to transplant them into their final spot in the soil. Right now they’re about 5 inches tall with several sets of leaves and looking really good. They should be ready to go into the ground in 2-3 weeks, when they’ll be double their present size. We’re also growing a couple of seedlings of Early Girl and Golden Jubilee tomatoes for a small start-up ketchup company, Sosu. We’ve tasted their ketchups and LOVE them! So we’re very excited to be able to grow tomatoes for them. They are taking ketchup to a whole new level of taste, from the commonplace to the extraordinary! Their founder, Lisa Murphy, will be working closely with Becky in our kitchen to develop processing systems so that we can “co-pack” their ketchup here in our farm kitchen. And I’m hoping that we will also develop some great Frog Hollow Farm Salsas this year as well. We’ll keep you posted!