Many people ask us, what makes your peaches so sweet and juicy? The biggest reason we are able to bring authentic tree ripened fruit to our customers is that we don’t pick our fruit when it’s still green.
This peach if picked at this stage, might ripen, but would be flavorless and mealy.
This peach is beginning to ripen. The background color (the color on the back side of the peach opposite the reddest side) has broken from a greenish-yellow to more of a yellow-orange hue. Our crew only picks the peaches when the background color breaks to this orangish color. If they mistakenly pick a green peach, it gets thrown away because it will never be a great tasting peach. Many things go into ripening the fruit~mostly heat and sun.
This peach is at a stage many people pick for shipping and sending to grocery stores. It is firm enough to withstand the jostling of being in a semi-trailer full of its brethren. However, this still needs to ripen for at least 2-3 days before it’s eaten. The background color is yellowish, but still has that green hue. This peach will “keep” well. But, peaches that look like this can be the kind we find in the grocery stores, take them home to eat and are disappointed because they don’t taste like anything.
Now these are the ripened beauties we love to see. No hints of green, just beautiful orangish, yellow color. The difference between these peaches and the one above can sometimes be two days on the tree, but if it is hot it they can sometimes change in an afternoon. We pick each variety four to five times so that in each picking we can select only those peaches that are ready.
Once the peaches are this color, we sort them by softness. Firm peaches go wholesale to stores or farm stands that buy our fruit to resell. Many of those stores like to label where the peaches come from and they proudly put our name on the display. They need a peach that, if kept cold, can store for a few days, is firm enough to be on the store shelf without bruising, but that will ripen perfectly once it is taken home by a customer. Conversely, if the peaches are just starting to soften, we sort them for our farmers markets. We can hand deliver those peaches to you and they don’t need to sit on a shelf. They just need a home and to be eaten!
