June at Bella Viva Orchards: Admiring those Apricots!

June at Bella Viva Orchards: Admiring those Apricots!

We just love June here in the Central Valley. The long, warm days signal the season for Father’s Day, barbecues and yes…Apricots! (You saw that coming, right?)

As you probably know, we offer a number of varieties and styles of California Apricots, and they’re all outstanding. While many of them come from trusted partners who are our neighbors, we grow our own California Tangy Apricots. And right now, we’re in the throes of our Apricot harvest! Mother Nature is giving those trees one more dose of sunshine and the trees are bending from the weight of the heavy, ripe and sweet fruit. Early in the morning, our expert team of harvest specialists are busy giving those trees some much-deserved relief after producing their amazing bounty. Once those bins are hand-filled, they’re whisked off to our drying yards to lock in that incredible sweetness.

Now, for a little background on our California Tangies: These Apricots are the Patterson variety that we grow on an estate orchard that’s been in our family since 1943. Just so you know, the Patterson Apricot is the most widely grown variety in California. Many other growers aim to get as much fruit from their trees as possible, and that’s fine for them. We do it differently, though. What we’re looking for is the largest, sweetest and most flavorful fruit that we can offer. The way we get what we want is by incorporating painstaking and costly practices, such as hand-pruning our trees and using a method called “thinning” that entails several visits from specialists throughout the season to remove up to 90 percent of the fruit that grows on each tree. While other farmers may use machines to harvest their fruit, we do it by hand. We also harvest our Apricots over several days and our harvest specialists select only the perfectly ripe fruit each time. When we combine all of our special practices the result is Apricot perfection.

Does this make you wonder what it would be like to be in our California Tangy Apricot orchard during harvest? We thought so, so we’ve included this short segment of homegrown footage for your enjoyment. Imagine being there on a sunny warm morning in the middle of this beautiful and fragrant place. You can almost taste those ‘cots, can’t you!? Oh yea-yah!

We know we’ve talked about our Apricots a lot, but we think they deserve the good press! And we’re just so proud of them. Now’s a great time to stock up on these amazing fruits and explore the multitude of ways to enjoy them, such as in this month’s recipe for Apricot-Glazed Pork Chops with Toasted Almonds. This recipe includes our bonus recipe for the Martino family’s Perfect Toasted Almonds so you can enjoy them the way our family has for generations. And we’re sweetening the ‘cot pot. During the month of June, our California Tangy Apricots our web special. Yes  friends, this month you’ll enjoy a 25 percent discount when you buy two or more one-pound bags!

Now that you’ve got the story on our California Tangy Apricots and are armed with this vast knowledge, we hope you’re in the mood to get outside and enjoy the summertime, fire up your grill and join us in admiring those Apricots!

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