We had a wonderful field trip with the MOMS Club earlier this week to a significant local business, here in Patterson, the "Apricot Capitol of the World!" Dave Santos of Blossom Hill Apricots (Lucich-Santos Farms) very generously gave us a great tour of the processing facility and the orchard, let the kids pick cherries and sent us each home with cherries and apricots. NICE!
The facility uses computer optics and manual sorting for size, color, defects. There were about 125 people working in the processing facility.
He told us that they are processing 2 million apricots a day!! More than any other apricot grower in North America.They clean, sort, and package organic fruit & send them to Trader Joes, Whole Foods, lots of high end grocers as well as the non-organic varieties to Costco, Mariani (dry fruit processors) and jam producers too!
Yummy!
Then we trooped out to the cherry orchard - which they officially finished picking a couple weeks ago - and he let us gather what we pleased. What a fun treat for all of us!!
Dang! Those were some juicy cherries. phew!
Now we're home with more fruit than we can safely consume - any favorite apricot recipes, anyone?
We started with popsicles. (blended apriots, yogurt, honey, milk)
A fun treat on a hot afternoon.
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