California Cherry and Blueberry Harvest Has Begun!

California Cherry and Blueberry Harvest Has Begun!

 

Hi friends, now that spring is in full throttle, we’ll bet you’ve been thinking of your annual favorites, including juicy, sweet California-grown Cherries and Blueberries. Good for you fruits, in so many ways.

As you may know, we’ve enjoyed a well-above average rain and snow season and a longer, colder winter season. Thanks in great part to that rain and weather, we think we’re going to have a bountiful Cherry and Blueberry harvest! This season, as always, we continue our efforts to focus on eliminating food waste and conserving water by doing what’s referred to as up-cycling, or “rescuing.” How does this work? In the case of Cherries and Blueberries, our local farmers bring their freshly-harvested fruits to the sorting sheds to prepare them for delivery to markets and stores far and wide. If a fruit, such as a Cherry is perfect in every way, with the exception of a cosmetic defect, has a lost stem or is just too ripe for the fresh market, it’s deemed to be a reject. Thankfully that’s not the end of the story for those fruits. While many rejected fruits are sent out to be juiced or used for cattle feed, still far too many are either disposed of or otherwise wasted. And that’s where our mission begins up-cycling every wasted nutrition-packed jewel that we can, to the tune of a billion or more Cherries each season.

So when you think about it, rescuing fruits saves water, too. It takes about 400 gallons of irrigation water to produce a pound of dried Cherries. Just fire up your favorite search engine and you can find lots of info to support this fact. While you’re researching, keep in mind that it takes about 5 pounds of fresh Cherries to make 1 pound of dried Cherries. Now, aside from saving about 400 gallons of water per pound of those Cherries, think about all the fuel, farm inputs and hard work that went into that pound. Kind of mind-boggling, right?

Facts and figures aside, if you’ve ever used Dried Cherries or Dried Blueberries in your meals, in recipes or as nutritious snacks, you know just how good they are. Dried Blueberries are one of the featured ingredients in our Bonkers Cookies, one of our favorite recipes in our recently-published Bella Viva Orchards cookbook, you can definitely chop some Dried Cherries and experience another flavor delight! We encourage it!

If you’ve got a hankering for Cherries and Blueberries, we’re happy – and you should be, too! This month, we’re offering Bella Viva Orchards’ Natural Dried Cherries for $8.99 per pound. That’s a nice 33 percent off our regular fair price. We’re also offering our Certified Organic Dried Blueberries for just $19.99 per pound. That’s a whopping 40 percent off, giving you more reasons to stock up, eat up and make those Bonkers Cookies! So lean back and praise yourself for being part of a movement to enjoy rescued fruit. So stock up and spread the good news!

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