fruit notes
Fresh this week
At the end of July, I got a text from Stan Devoto: “No internet for 4 days! Apples in about 3 weeks!” This is the reminder I get to start mentally preparing for apples. Local apple season always feels like it sneaks up on me. But long before apple season starts, Stan and his long-time crew are in the orchard. They’re trimming the trees in January, grafting in February (called top-working ), and pruning in February and March ahead of the fleeting season to come. He always tells me that those months are his favorite time of year to be in the orchard. It’s a bit slower, and I always imagined it’s pensive work. When apple season starts, everything is busy, varieties change weekly, and the season moves fast. (Fast! It’s mid-August, and here we are.) The first Gravensteins and Pink Pearl apples were harvested last week. Stan said they were tart-tart and suggested we wait a week. Who's to argue with Stan Devoto? This week, the Gravs and Pink Pearls are amazing. The Gravs are sweet and tart with a welcoming crunch. The Pink Pearls are pleasingly tart, so juicy, with a real nice bite. (And that color!) These varieties aren’t around for long, so while we may not be quite ready for apple season, it’s now or never and we don’t want to miss ‘em! Store in the fridge. Grown organically by Devoto Orchards in Sebastopol.
After 16 years of farming, Toby is still wildly passionate about growing delicious fruit. He’s making space in his orchard for a few grape vines, which is one of his newest crops. This is his first harvest of Summer Royal grapes from these young vines and they are TASTY. Summer Royals are a black seedless grape with deep blue-black skin covered in a beautiful bloom. They’re super juicy with strong muscat flavors. I usually associate muscat flavors with green-skinned grapes so this one is a lovely surprise. We’re excited for more grape varieties to come from Toby’s farm in Winters. Most grapes are grown in the Central Valley and there’s something special about late-season grapes from Northern California. Store in the fridge. Grown organically by Free Spirit Farm in Winters.
A member of the tomato family, these Goldie husk cherries have a tiny little yellow-orange berry behind its papery husk. When ripe these beautiful fruits develop a deep golden-yellow color and drop to the ground. The flavor is wild! They have super fun notes of sweet vanilla and pineapple but the flavors vary berry-to-berry. (This just adds to the interactive nature of eating them :) Sam of Spade & Plow says this variety’s vining growing habit makes it challenging to harvest. This makes them unpopular with large-scale farmers so you typically only see them grown in home gardens or on smaller farms. Store these on your counter in a dry spot. Grown organically by Spade & Plow Organics in San Martin.
Fifteen miles west of Davis, Toby Hastings of Free Spirit Farm grows 7 acres of delicious fruits organically. This week, we’re enjoying the last harvest of Honey Punch pluots (plum-apricot hybrid), which have been incredibly bountiful and tasty this season. Visually similar to the popular Flavor King pluots, these are super sweet and juicy with a hint of a tropical aftertaste. Compared to other plums and pluots, these Honey Punch pluots form a denser coating of the naturally-occurring waxy bloom on its skin. Fun fact: the “wax bloom” helps protect the fruit from moisture loss, naturally helping extend shelf life! Store on the counter. Grown organically by Free Spirit Farm in Winters.
The series of heat waves in July caused multiple successions of melons to ripen all at once at Sun Tracker Farm. This led to a lighter melon harvest in the first of half August as the plants recovered and slowly started fruiting again. This next succession of melons are looking beautiful and are ripening slowly and consistently, which is auspicious for maxx flavor development! This week’s Dark Belle watermelon is one of my favorite watermelon varieties. They are smaller with a more intense flavor. Its red flesh is speckled with few seeds behind a thin rind. It’s the perfect picnic watermelon, screaming summer isn’t over! Store in the fridge. Grown organically by Sun Tracker Farm in Guinda.
There’s a phrase my 96-year-old grandma uses often: 熱氣 yeet-hay. It directly translates to “hot air”. There are foods that give you yeet-hay and there are foods that can cool yeet-hay. Too much yeet-hay food causes an imbalance in your body, leading to illness. Cherries and peaches are yeet-hay, so I was instructed not to eat too many (specifically, no more than eleven cherries…) Despite being, well, a peach, donut peaches are not yeet-hay. This never quite made sense to young me (but a budding fruit lover takes what she can get!) Later, when I learned that donut peaches are descendents of the peentau peach, a flat peach variety considered the “peach of immortality” in China, it all made a little more sense. These late summer Galaxy white donut peaches are amazing. They’re sweet, juicy, and so floral and aromatic. Store them on the counter. Grown organically by Terra Firma Farms in Winters.
Encore appearances
During the warm season, figs set two crops of fruit. The first figs appear in late spring when trees are just starting to leaf out, known as the breba crop. Breba crop figs are the ultimate tease: the figs are bigger, less abundant, and not as flavorful compared to the main crop. But still, it’s hard to resist! Main crop figs are NOW and they are really popping off in warm inland areas like Winters and the Capay Valley. Toby at Free Spirit Farm grows a few trees of each fig variety: Black Mission, Brown Turkey, and Candy Stripe. He pushes ripeness and doesn’t harvest them until they are super jammy and sweet. It’s amazing that the birds haven’t gotten to them first. Lucky us! Store your figs in the fridge. Grown organically by Free Spirit Farm in Winters.
