I got the call around 2 p.m. They said a candy sugar crash had hit their place of work. This can be a tough town, I told them. There is always a clear plastic bowl filled with miniature chocolates in …
Fall Pears You Should Taste
We love pears not only for their form, but also for their function—buttery as a fine chardonnay, subtly perfumed, and meltingly tender, a perfectly ripe pear can be a sublime eating …
Dessert Foods versus Food Deserts
I wasn’t really a very good student. Luckily in elementary school, I had a great teacher who helped me after school with my spelling. Her name was Mrs. Unruh. She used to devise little tricks to help …
Save an Apple and Help a Farmer
I wrote a couple weeks ago about how much I love Gravenstein apple season– and now it’s here! We will be making deliveries the weeks of August 21 and 28. You can experience this endangered heritage …
Does Back-to-School mean Summer is Over?
I wasn’t a great Latin student, but I lived by the motto coined by my high school Latin Club members – semper ubi sub-ubi, “Always wear underwear.” (Ubi means “where,” but you get the idea, this was …
The Joys of Summer Fruit
Summer for many of us is tied to the memory of a perfect piece of fruit. The tartness of that just-picked blackberry; the smell of a peach so sweet you salivate in anticipation of biting into …
What a Plum-mer!
Summer is flying by faster than a fish on a unicycle and that can only mean one thing: PLUMS. Plums are now joining the parade of stone fruit that began back in June with cherries and apricots, and …
Take a Breather to Cool Off
It’s hot out there campers. While here in Northern California, we have been blessed with an unusually-cool summer thus far, I know the rest of the country is beating heat records left and right. This …
FruitGuy Noir in The Stone Fruit Spinning Wheel
My catfish Bicycle was 20 minutes into their workout on our new aqua treadmill when their hydrophone rang. “Blub, blub,” they mouthed in my direction, quickly transferring the call and motioning …
Happy Summer & Welcome Peaches
At this time of year, varieties of peaches begin to come in and out of harvest almost weekly, evolving from June tartness to the cinnamony-sweet notes of late August. As I track the progression of …
June Celebrations
I love June. It’s the month when stone fruit becomes abundant, the hours of sunlight in the northern hemisphere reach their peak (summer solstice), and when we celebrate both Juneteenth & Pride …
Clinging to Fruit 101
If Cling and Freestone sounds like a 1970s folk group gone electric, you’re not quite wrong. Stone fruit season has begun and it makes me want to do a head-banging pan flute solo. It’s never too late …
Of Blooms & B Corp (Re)certification
Back in 2018, we began the process of becoming a Certified B Corporation (aka B Corp). We felt it was a good way for us to add transparency to our values-driven business model and to codify our …
Here’s to the 2023 FruitGuys Community Fund Grantees
Each spring, The FruitGuys Community Fund provides annual grant awards for sustainability projects to small, American farms and agricultural nonprofits. An independent review committee made up of a …
The Story of the Oishi Family Farm
This newsletter is dedicated to the Japanese-American Internees The Oishi family was part of the farming community of Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese ancestry who were flower growers …
The Gamble of Early Summer Fruit
Long ago I wondered why slot machines used cherries as the winning images for hitting the jackpot. It didn’t make sense to me. Maybe a dollar sign, or a star, but cherries? It seemed odd. Yet a …
Leaping into Spring: Our 25 Year Impact Report
I was once told by a trusted friend that, for impatient people like me who sometimes think that acting fast produces a greater result in a shorter amount of time, it is actually the ability to slow …
FruitGuy Noir in: Avoiding the Rabbit Hole
The text came in old school: via Cowbell Morse code. “You’re a little rusty,” my catfish Bicycle mimed to me while I wrote down the incoming message. “Got it,” I quickly flagged back to Bicycle in …
Fruit in Words and Deeds
The struggle and beauty of fruit, its cultivation and care, is a dance of regenerative-impermanence. As we approach Earth Day, I find myself fascinated with the idea that the earth itself gives us …
Words for Spring & Fruit Poem Contest
April is National Poetry Month. Looking for the right poem for today? For this feeling, you have in early spring in our world today? You can probably find it on poets.org. Their database of more than …
