Welcome to our web site. Below you will find a letter introducing Coco Ranch. Elsewhere on the site you will find:
N.B.: New phone number. Our phone number used to be 753-7003. Now it is 753-3361. Please update your addressbook if you still have the old number.
Growers of Quality Organic Tree Fruit
Near Davis, Dixon, and Winters in northern California
Mailing address: 1105 Kennedy Place #1, Davis, CA 95616
Telephone: +1 530 753 3361
Dear Friend of Local Agriculture,
As growers of fine tree-fruits, we often meet people who have summer memories of delicious, fragrant, sweet peaches, and, when tasting ours for the first time, tell us, "This peach takes me back to my childhood on the farm" or "I have not had a peach this good for thirty years." But many people, without those memories, are surprised at our fruit and tell us, "This is a whole new experience in fruit." Children in a local school-lunch program, when served our sweet ripe apples, did not even recognize them as apples --- they were so different from the apples they were familiar with. And every year, the most frequently repeated comment we hear about our apples is, "These are the best apples I have ever had."
What does it take to bring tasty fruit to life? In our brand-name-conscious culture, people often assume that the quality is in the variety. But our buyers, who have enjoyed our fruit and made special note of the variety name, have bought that same variety elsewhere and been greatly disappointed. Growing practices are vital to eating quality. To be sure, there are too many industrial fruit varieties that can never aspire to be anything but dull, but there are many, many fruit varieties, each unique, that are absolutely delightful if grown well. Scientific research has shown that organically grown fruit is sweeter and contains more minerals, vitamins, and beneficial phytonutrients than conventionally grown fruit. While conventional chemical fertilizer speeds tree growth and sizes fruit quickly, it produces fruit that is less dense and tastes watery.
Sunshine and weather count for flavor too. Long-season apples such as Fuji need a lot of sunshine and cannot develop their full varietal flavor when grown in areas with limited growing seasons, such as Washington State. Also, fruit need to mature and ripen on the tree for good eating quality. But tree-ripened fruit is too delicate and soft to withstand machine sorting, packing, and other large-scale factory processes, while the alternative, human care and attention and small scale, is expensive. Then, storing fruit takes its toll on eating quality. Grocery stores, working to continually stock a full selection of fruit, buy fruit out of storage and store it further. Delicate flavor components vanish when peaches, cherries, and apricots are refrigerated. Apples, held at length in low-oxygen atmospheres flooded with nitrogen and argon gasses, come out of storage looking remarkably good, but their eating quality has degraded and the fruit degenerates rapidly.
So what is a fruit-lover to do? Well, we planted our own orchard. But you do not need to. We have the fertile soil, the sunshine, the education, and, as long-time organic growers, the practical experience and the know-how. We carefully select all of our varieties for eating quality, pick our fruit ripe, sort and pack by hand, and bring fruit to our committed buyers each week fresh and in season.
We invite you to call us and inquire about joining our private market. Fruit pick-ups this year are on Wednesdays in Davis and Dixon. We would like to hear from you.
--- The House Family
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