Meat Buyers Club & Late Mandarins & Persimmons

Chickens in the orchard by a mandarin tree.

New at the fruit stand now are navel oranges.  Grapefruit and kiwi should be coming soon. We still have lots of mandarins at the fruit stand, including  owari satsuma and another orange-red variety of satsuma.  Both are sweet and easy to peel mandarins, the difference is that the orange-red satsuma variety is darker on the outside and less acidic.

Surprisingly, there's still a good supply of persimmons at the fruit stand.  We have soft hachiya, firmer vodka-treated hyakume, fuyu and maru ('chocolate') persimmons.  Since both persimmons and mandarins ripened late this year, they're available later than usual. 

In late December KCRA channel 3 News came to visit the orchard to do a story on hoshigaki (Japanese hand dried persimmons).  You can see a slide show on the KCRA website.  The Nikkei West newspaper visited too and has an article about hoshigaki and Otow Orchard on the front page of the current issue.

The last hoshigaki is drying and we're down to only one drying room full now.  We still need to check on the hoshigaki to see how they're drying and massage them every few days until they're finished.  Shoko has been busy packing them up and sending out mail orders.  We're still taking hoshigaki orders for pick up at the fruit stand and by mail order, too.   

The next delivery for the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club will be at our orchard from 4:00 - 5:00 on Friday, Jan. 20th. Orders need to be received by Fri., Jan. 13th at 5:00.  Through the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club you can order local naturally grown pork and lamb, grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, eggs and honey.  New this month are mandarins, navel oranges, meyer lemons and mandarin sauces.  Monthly deliveries are at our orchard in Granite Bay, Community Ink in Truckee,  Confluence Kitchen in Auburn and Sinclair Family Farm in Penryn.