If someone handed you $5,000, what would you turn it into? Twenty-one farmers across the country are answering that question right now. How Grants for Small Farms Make a Difference In May 2025, these farmers earned microgrants of up to $5,000 from The FruitGuys Community Fund (TFGCF) to complete sustainability projects on their farms by December 2025. Three months in,
Sweet-tart Gravenstein apples first arrived in California in 1811, and the trees in farmer John Kolling’s orchard in Sebastopol are almost old enough to remember. “Most of the old Gravs are huge trees—35 feet tall and spreading like crazy,” John told The FruitGuys. “They were planted around 1895.” Every August, John supplies The FruitGuys with rare, organic Gravenstein apples for
It’s Gravenstein apple time! The FruitGuys has celebrated the Sebastopol Gravenstein for almost twenty years. Every August during the harvest, we highlight this specialty apple by packing it in our limited-time Annual Gravenstein Apple Box. Last year, we got a lot of questions about the Grav, so I thought I’d answer some of them for you. Let’s start with the
Your fruit has a story—but do you know it? We’ve gathered answers to some of the most common questions we get about where our produce comes from to help you get acquainted. 1. Where does The FruitGuys’ produce come from? We source our produce from small family farms near our regional hubs whenever we can. However, we can’t source from
Many small-scale farmers want to rebuild their soil, support their local pollinators, or share more environmental education with their communities—but a lack of funding holds them back. That’s where The FruitGuys Community Fund (TFGCF) comes in. Every year, it awards small farm grants to farms and agricultural nonprofits specifically for sustainability projects. 2024: The Biggest Grant Year Yet! In the
My parents are originally from Louisiana, and when they came to visit this past weekend they shared a photograph they’d found among my grandparents’ belongings. The monochrome image captures a moment in time. In it, a pile of harvested sugarcane waits for processing at a mill; behind it stand a lean-to and a dozen Black and white men, women, and
“Try this one, it’s the best,” micro farmer Byron Nkhoma says, bending down and plucking a few leaves from an arugula plant. He hands them out for our little group to taste. The leaves are peppery—just as I expected—but somehow creamier than other arugula I’ve tried. Byron says it’s because they come from an older plant. Continuing through his farm
I’m happy to report that our 2025 grant cycle is now open! Each year since 2012, The FruitGuys Community Fund (TFGCF) has had the joy and pleasure of issuing farming grants for small farms across the US. To date, we’ve awarded 143 grants across 38 US states and territories. TFGCF’s Farming Grants for Small Farms When our committee picks a new class
“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 how Megan Shanley Warren describes her life in three words. Megan started farming California finger limes, avocados, passion fruit, and more specialty crops with her father, Jim Shanley, in
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 first Tuesday of December—is a holiday I can get behind. Giving Tuesday is a day to donate money to the causes you believe in
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 round while others are almost as big as a grapefruit. Like apples, they have differing levels of sweetness but are all crisp, juicy, and delicious.
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 mature before harvest. As I read the mid-year updates we just received from The FruitGuys Community Fund’s grantee farmers, their patience really stood out to me.
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 FruitGuys Community Fund (TFGCF). 2024 Small Farm Grants Earlier in 2024, TFGCF awarded farm grants to twenty small farms and agricultural nonprofits from sixteen
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 pear man at heart. The Family Farm’s Best-Kept Secrets “I really enjoy pears, and I think they’re a commonly misunderstood fruit, especially in the grocery store,” Clair told The FruitGuys in
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 years old, with gnarled, seven-foot-wide trunks that have stood through two world wars. Those same trees are also endangered. Make a Tart, Save a Tree The
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 afford any.) It was the fact that her dad always bought a case of Coke and a bag of Florida oranges for their family of six to celebrate.
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 your own shopping cart at some point with your eye on the USDA Organic seal. But what does the word “organic” on that sticker actually mean?
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 event with a bushel of ideas thanks in part to keynote speaker Erik Wahl. “His message was to be creative, think out of the box, be innovative,
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 and the planet, and we’ve detailed those efforts in The FruitGuys 2023 Impact Report. Here’s a quick look at the good we did together in 2023: We also won two awards! Real
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 moment” far away from home. Sydney’s Story: Chasin’ Dreams Farm Sydney was raised in Maryland, but her snack business lightbulb went off in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she was studying
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