Dear CSA members,<\/p>\r\n
So many crops are ripening at the same time; it\u2019s often a challenge to decide which ones to pick next. It\u2019s \u201cpeak\u201d peach pick time, with four varieties ripening: Cal Red, O\u2019Henry, August Flame and August Lady. The nectarines are just two varieties - August Reds and August Fire. The plums\/pluots are four varieties - Flavor King, Flavor Heart, Dapple Dandy and Emerald Beaut.<\/p>\r\n
And now come the Warren pears - 11 acres of them - all needing to be picked now because they drop to the ground the moment they get ripe.<\/p>\r\n
The peaches need to be picked at just that right moment of full ripeness, yet not too ripe or they\u2019ll be just too soft to be saleable and will have to be sent to either the drying operation or the freezing operation. (Thank goodness we have those options to capture the value of the overripe fruit, which is actually the sweetest fruit!)<\/p>\r\n
The two varieties of nectarines are behaving themselves this year and ripening very slowly unlike in previous years when we\u2019ve lost too many to over ripeness. This year we\u2019re picking them only as fast as we need to in order to fulfill orders.<\/p>\r\n
Then there are the plums\/pluots. They are \u201cfarmer friendly\u201d for two reasons:<\/p>\r\n
#1: They hang well on the tree, meaning that unlike the Warren pears, they do not drop to the ground.<\/p>\r\n
#2: And unbelievably, they don\u2019t get over ripe on the tree either, as do peaches and nectarines. They\u2019re also consumer friendly because they ripen perfectly, over several days, at home at room temperature.<\/p>\r\n
So all of these growth and ripening characteristics of each fruit must be weighed in the balance of \u2018make and demand,\u2019 order fulfillment, the capacity of my picking crew, packing shed capabilities, and storage capacity. Not to mention the pressures of weather. This year we\u2019ve had only a couple of very short heat waves, so it\u2019s been okay \u2014 easy on the fruit and easy on the workers.<\/p>\r\n
If only we didn\u2019t have the drought, with all of its consequences to deal with, this year would be a \u201cgood year\u201d \u2014 a farmer\u2019s dream!<\/p>\r\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear CSA members, So many crops are ripening at the same time; it\u2019s often a challenge to decide which ones to pick next. It\u2019s \u201cpeak\u201d peach pick time, with four varieties ripening: Cal Red, O\u2019Henry, August Flame and August Lady. The nectarines are just two varieties – August Reds and August Fire. The plums\/pluots are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1kR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}