small farms

Meet Your Finger Lime Farmer: Megan Shanley Warren

By Lex Flamm on

“Farming is scary. Farming is beautiful. You get your crop and you get to enjoy it and see other people enjoy it. And farming is extremely unpredictable.”  Scary, beautiful, and unpredictable—that’s …

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Want a Greener Future? Help Fund Grants for Small Farms

By Erin Mittelstaedt on

I’ve never been a fan of Black Friday. Getting up early to get in line and shop just doesn’t seem fun to me. I prefer my post-Thanksgiving breakfast pie, thank you very much. But Giving Tuesday—the …

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Asian Pear Farms From Coast to Coast

By Erin Mittelstaedt on

I absolutely love Asian pears. They come in dozens of varieties, like Hosui and Shinseiki to name a few. Some have thin yellow or yellow-green skin, some have thicker golden skin. Some are small and …

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Behind the Scenes at Brittany’s Bees: A Small Farm Grants Story

By Erin Mittelstaedt on

Farming is an exercise in patience. On average, it takes three years for a new fruit tree to bear fruit. Even fast-growing vegetables, like spinach and radishes, typically need at least 25-30 days to …

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How Small Farms Are Putting Their 2024 Farm Grants to Work

By The FruitGuys on

Supporting small farms is a major part of our mission at The FruitGuys. We source fruit from independent farms for our fruit boxes whenever we can, and we also award farm grants every year through The …

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Farmer of the Month: Clair Kauffman of Kauffman Orchards

By Lex Flamm on

Kauffman Orchards in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, turns out super-sweet Saturn donut peaches, glossy Ruby Queen plums, and crisp Ginger Gold apples every year. But Orchard Manager Clair Kauffman is a …

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Savory Apple Tarts: A Gravenstein Apple Recipe

By The FruitGuys on

For just a few glorious weeks every August, Gravenstein apple trees in Sebastopol, California, shower the farmers who tend them with a bounty of sweet-tart fruit. Some of these trees are more than 100 …

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Supporting Local, Small Farms Can Help Change Our Food System

By Erin Mittelstaedt on

Helen, my wife's late grandmother, loved the Christmas holiday growing up. It wasn’t the presents that made it special. (Her family lived in rural West Virginia during the Depression and could rarely …

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What Does Organic Mean?

By The FruitGuys on

Every year, Americans buy about 8% more organic products than they did the year before. That’s a remarkable rate of industry growth. You’ve probably put a crisp organic apple or head of lettuce into …

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Takeaways From West Coast Produce Expo: ‘Smell Some Crayons’

By The FruitGuys on

The idiom “stop and smell the roses” is pretty dang good—but at this year’s West Coast Produce Expo, it got a 21st-century upgrade. FruitGuys Produce Buyer Miguel Esteban Robles came back from the …

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The FruitGuys 2023 Impact Report Is Here!

By Lex Flamm on

The numbers are in: In 2023, The FruitGuys clients purchased 384,000 boxes containing 20.6 million servings of fruit, vegetables, and snacks. Every single serving helped positively impact communities …

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Support a Women-Owned Small Business: Try These Snacks!

By Lex Flamm on

Renée Dunn and Sydney Chasin lead very different lives, but they have two important things in common: They each founded a women-owned small business to sell snacks, and had their entrepreneurship “aha …

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Why Doesn’t My Seasonal Farm-Fresh Fruit Look Perfect?

By Lex Flamm on

Nobody’s perfect. We were all born a tiny bit uneven, whether because of the way our freckles land on our faces or the slightly mismatched size of our feet. Nature leaves its mark on all of us — and …

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Farmer of the Month: Bianca Kaprielian of Fruit World

By Lex Flamm on

At 9 a.m. on February 3, 2024, swimmers lined up on the shore of the San Francisco Bay. The chilly water beckoned, droplets leaping up and causing shivers. Then — splash! They dove in and surged …

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EcoFarm 2024 Celebrates BIPOC and Queer Farmers

By Lex Flamm on

Every winter, FruitGuys Senior Buyer and Chief Fruit Detective Rebecca North counts down the days to the EcoFarm Conference. The event hosted by the non-profit Ecological Farming Association brings …

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2023 Small Farm Grant Winners Share Their Project Achievements

By Sheila Cassani on

In 2023, The FruitGuys Community Fund (TFGCF) awarded its largest class of farm grantees so far: 18 small-scale farms and agricultural non-profits were awarded a total of $83,757 in grant awards for …

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Are Small Farms Important? 6 Reasons to Support Them

By The FruitGuys on

It’s hard to flip through a food magazine these days without coming across an article telling you to “shop small,” “eat local,” or “support a farmer.” That’s largely thanks to the farm-to-table …

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Save an Apple and Help a Farmer

By Chris Mittelstaedt on

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 …

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Here’s to the 2023 FruitGuys Community Fund Grantees

By Chris Mittelstaedt on

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 …

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The FruitGuys Awarded B Corp Best for the World

By Pia Hinckle on

The FruitGuys has been named a 2022 Best for the World™ B Corp™ in recognition of its exceptional positive impact in the Community category. Best for the World is a distinction granted to Certified B …

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