I’m not a regular poster on social media, not even on my own website. But it’s raining!   You have no idea how existential the drought is for us – even worse if it’s not drought but change of climate, from Mediterranean to Desert. That’s going to mean the end of our little tangerine pirate ship*, if/when it happens.

But right now it’s raining, an inch before Noon, and I couldn’t be happier.

In December of 2020 we received a wonderful write-up from the Wall Street Journal, touting our Seedless Kishus (which really are as good as the article said they are). Our mailing list almost doubled in a very short time. Trouble was, 2021 was a year of very low harvest for kishus, and we had a lot of new friends whom we couldn’t supply.

Kishus are a winter variety, so we begged you new friends to stick around for our spring variety, Ojai Pixies, which this past season we had in abundance. You stuck around, bless your hearts, and discovered the joy and delight of tree-ripe fresh-picked Ojai Pixies.

This year the varieties are reversed — we are looking at a good harvest of Seedless Kishus, while the Ojai Pixie crop is sparse. This means that we should be able to serve all our customers, weather permitting, with at least one carton per recipient of Seedless Kishus. We’ll have to wait and see how the Ojai Pixie crop is going to do – this could turn out to be the reverse of last season, and we may have to restrict sales of Ojai Pixies but should  be able to fill all orders for Seedless Kishus.

Lisa and Mike and I are busy preparing for the coming season – testing a new carton, going around estimating the crop size, shoring up our back office routines.

Also mending the harness and sharpening the shovel…

We duck the Christmas craziness – the fruit isn’t ready in time, and neither are we. Lisa will send out ordering information in January, and we will start shipping in February, weather permitting.

We always say “weather permitting” because Nature rules us – we could have a killer freeze, for instance, and lose our crop. It has happened. Or an insane north wind, knocking all the fruit off the trees – which has also happened.

Thank you for your support, whether you have been with us for 15 years or for one year. We are grateful to have the opportunity to serve you and we look forward to this winter with renewed, rain-borne hope.

Jim C

*We call it a pirate ship because we’re just 3 people who believe that the world should be able to experience what tree-ripe fresh citrus fruit tastes like. We don’t wax our fruit to gloss it up, we don’t promote outside our little list of followers, we don’t use Influencers, we don’t post, we don’t optimize for search engines. We just grow fruit, let it get ripe, harvest it and send it out. We often feel like we’re navigating our way through an increasingly monstrous ocean of giant capitalist entities all seeking to penetrate everyone’s minds; we on the other hand are just trying to sell fruit that tastes good. We still think the object is more important than the image.

And that’s why we call ourselves a little pirate ship.