Season: Winsummer…?

Some things just seem impossible to have together: a blizzard in Miami in July; midnight and noon at the same time; flippers and feet. But once in a while a strange convergence of natural coincidences stretch and twist seasonality into a mobius strip of time that’s about as confusing as an episode of “LOST.” 2009 is one of those years for fruit. I’ve been delivering fruit to offices for nearly 12 years and I can’t remember a time when we’ve had such sweet fresh winter Tangerines and late Navel Oranges as well as early summer stone fruit at the same time in our fruit crates.
FruitGuys News writer Heidi Lewis interviewed Emily Ayala of Friends Ranch about the bumper crop of Ojai pixies we are seeing so late into the season for our bi-weekly online magazine. Ayala said she thinks the freeze a few years back forced her trees into a recovery mode of high production that has contributed to the good late citrus. A number of our other farmers have told me that the weather this year has been great for citrus.

On the stone fruit side, we’ll start to see early peaches and cherries. We tend to wait for a little on the cherries because the first crops often aren’t that sweet until we get a few weeks into the season. Our tree fruit farmers tell us their fruit is sugaring up nicely and quickly. Here’s a quick reminder of what “stone fruit” means: a fruit with a hard pit or stone. Summer fruits classified as stone fruits includes cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, and apricots, as well as hybrids like Pluots, Apriums, and Plumcots.

We do vary our mixes by region and summer means a greater variety of fruit everywhere. You can see what’s in your box by region by going to www.fruitguys.com and clicking on the yellow button that says, “This week’s mix.”

Enjoy and be fruitful! – Chris Mittelstaedt chiefbanana@fruitguys.com