This Farm’s Organic Apricots Help Heal the Planet

When The FruitGuys called farmer Vernon Peterson in late March to talk about organic apricots, he picked up the phone from the middle of his nectarine orchard. His smiling face filled up the video call’s screen, and behind him, we saw a sea of green. 

“These are our cover crops,” he said, gesturing proudly to what looked like long grasses waving between rows of nectarine trees. He crouched down to give us a closer look, then started pointing to each plant, listing off names like Super Bee phacelia and Nitro radish.

It was amazing to see. Most commercial orchards have bare ground between their trees, but Vern’s farm is anything but ordinary. It’s Regenerative Organic Certified (a step beyond organic certification), and he and his son Erik Peterson use eco-friendly farming practices to feed their soil and sequester carbon—producing delicious stone that helps heal the planet. 

The Story Behind Vern’s Family Farm

Vern is the founder and owner of the farm Abundant Harvest Organics and the fruit packing company The Peterson Family. 

“We grow stone fruit: peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots—that kind of stuff—and we pack that for a lot of our neighbors. We also pack citrus for neighbors, and we keep about a hundred people working year-round and another fifty seasonally,” Vern told The FruitGuys. 

Both the farm and the packing company are located near Kingsburg in California’s Central Valley on land that’s been in Vern’s family since 1893. His great-grandparents immigrated from Sweden to the US to escape the brutal famine of 1866–68. They first settled in Minnesota, then moved to California, where they found farmland ideal for growing stone fruit. 

“In all the world, it’s the best—much like Napa Valley is the locale for wine grapes, this is the locale for stone fruit,” Vern said. 

He credits the area’s deep and well-drained soil, hot and dry summers, and cold-but-not-too-cold winters. Those conditions make it possible for Vern and Erik to grow their stone fruit with organic and regenerative farming practices. They market it through Homegrown Organic Farms—a local collective of family farmers—which sends it to The FruitGuys for our organic fruit mixes and bulk fruit cases. Vern and Erik’s organic apricots, peaches, plums, and more have been a hit with our customers since 2019. 

Climate-Smart Farming that Heals the Planet

The Petersons believe in stewarding the land. Their farm is certified organic and Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), which means they have to follow strict guidelines to ensure they’re growing food in an eco-friendly way. 

The Petersons don’t use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides or grow GMO seeds. Instead, they use beneficial insects for pest control, fertilize with waste from the chickens they raise, and plant cover crops (crops with soil-building, rather than monetary, value) between their trees.

“Each one of those plant species I started to show you supports its own microbial community, and that microbial community is basically harvesting the nutrition in the soil. So we’re taking care of that cover crop, and the cover crop takes care of the nectarine tree,” Vern explained.  

Vern grew up farming conventionally and shifted to using organic practices in 2002 for financial reasons, but he quickly saw the benefits. By building his soil, he’s reducing his water use year-over-year. That soil also sequesters more greenhouse gases than the farm produces, making its operation carbon negative—even when you count emissions from trucking fruit across the country. 

“You can be sure when you eat one of our peaches that it has contributed to reversing greenhouse gas. That peach has contributed to less carbon in the atmosphere—that’s what we know,” he said, later adding, “My birthday was last week and I turned 68. This is my fiftieth year signing payroll checks, but this is the most fun I’ve had. It’s really the best season of my life, and it’s because what we’re learning about what’s going on in the soil is just so amazing.” 

Taking Care of People: Living Wages, Bonuses, and More

On top of its organic and ROC certifications, Abundant Harvest Organics is Equitable Food Initiative Certified (EFI). That means the farm follows rigorous “social standards” designed to protect its workers in areas ranging from health and safety to fair compensation and the option to unionize. 

In 2024, field workers at Abundant Harvest Organics made an average of $24.60 per hour. They also get robust benefits, including free access to a nurse practitioner, vision and dental plans, a matched 401k, and paid vacation time. 

Vern is also proud to participate in EFI’s retailer-paid worker bonus program. Companies buying Vern’s fruit—including The FruitGuys—pay a little extra for every pound of fruit sold, and that money goes directly to the workers.

“That doesn’t sound like much, but the penny and a half a pound that The FruitGuys pays for the fruit that you received from us amounted to a $1,200 bonus to our field workers, and that’s not chump change, that’s real money. That’s real money that ends up with real people,” Vern said. 

Those people are responsible for harvesting delicious stone fruit, including organic apricots that should arrive in The FruitGuys’ boxes in just a few weeks. 

Delicious Stone Fruit Coming Soon

When The FruitGuys spoke to Vern in late March, he was getting excited for his first stone fruit of the year: apricots. He’s expecting a smaller-than-usual harvest, starting with the Kylese variety in the last week of April. It has a classic apricot flavor and a pretty, red blush on its skin. 

Peaches and nectarines will come next, followed by plums and pluots. The farming families that The Peterson Family packs for grow a whopping 105 varieties of stone fruit across a thousand acres, three hundred of which belong to Vern. Their harvest times are staggered throughout the spring, summer, and fall so that he can sell fruit as long as possible. Every week brings different varieties of yellow and white peaches, yellow and white nectarines, red and black plums, apricots, and pluots. His favorites are the Mariposa plum and Zee Lady peach. 

“The Mariposa is an old heirloom variety. We don’t have much of it anymore, but we still have it as a pollinator on one ranch—deep blood red, wonderful flavor. Then the Zee Lady peach is just all that peachiness that you have been waiting all year for,” he told us. 

If you’re on the West Coast, you can try Vern’s fruit for yourself in The FruitGuys’ organic fruit mixes and bulk fruit cases. Keep an eye out for his organic apricots, which we’re hoping to add to boxes in the first week of May.