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First rain

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.

Heart of Pixie

April 1

We head into the heart of Pixie and Hass avocado season. Most of our acreage is planted to these two varieties. This is the season of larger picking crews and 1000-lb bins.

 

Spring 2021 – a note from Jim

20th Mar 2021

Momentarily bucolic — dawn at the orchard.

The organic Kishu season has ended at Churchill Orchard, and the organic Pixie season has begun.

Kishu season was kind of a project – we got that lovely write-up in the Wall Street Journal in mid-December, right as we were starting a season where the crop size was a fifth of the previous year’s. We knew we didn’t have the fruit to serve all the new potential customers, and we had to say No to thousands of would-be customers who signed up – a stressful time for sure.

But it’s Pixie time now, and a different story. We will have enough organic Pixies for all, and as some of the other fruits that we grow come ripe we will add them in to our product list. There will be Hass avocados, Oro Blancos, and a couple of mixed fruit options.


Jim with his new tractor. Shiny and clean for a couple of days.

On the farm – the new tractor that we bought in December arrived this week, finally, and Mike immediately put the little gannon box on the back and started preparing the ground for his garden.

We fertilized all the trees in late February – early March, to give them food to grow new leaves during the spring growth spurt.

The drought continues to reign supreme here in Ventura County — so far this rain year we’ve gotten a total of about 6″, and we’re halfway through the last month that might have any chance of rain. (There is no “typical” rain year here, but the annual average is 14″.) Lake Casitas, the source of our water, is at a hair under 39% full, which is not good. We will probably have to turn off the water on some of the least productive or least desirable trees in order to make it through the year.

One of the ways we deal with the drought is by obsessively monitoring our irrigation. We use a device called an atmometer that measures evapotranspiration, to know when and for how long to irrigate, and we walk the irrigation lines every time we irrigate, looking for leaks, hose damage caused by mischievous young coyotes, blocked emitters – anything wasting water or causing individual trees not to receive their share. That irrigation season is about to start in earnest, where we will be watering each block of trees between weekly and every 10 days or so.

This being my first blog post, I’ll see if I can’t update it regularly with farm news.

thank you for reading!

Jim Churchill

Kishu Outlook – cloudy, but should clear up.

Jan 7, 2021
We’ve been hearing from many of you wondering if there are Kishu mandarins for sale this year.
Yes, Kishus are coming.
We hope to open ordering in late January, but the fruit makes the final call.
We have to limit our sales this year – it’s a small crop, and we’ve had a tsunami of new interest after a lovely write-up in the WSJ. This always happens in years when we have a small crop. Must be nature….
For pre-existing customers, there will be a 2 box limit this year, because this is a small crop year after 2020’s bonanza harvest. If nobody orders, then we will offer another round.
More Drama.
We’re having some trouble getting our carton order filled this year (no cardboard available til March, they tell us) – creating complications. We need a special box to qualify for the Fedex rate we want to use. So while we are scrounging for boxes, we can’t tell customers what the fruit and shipping will cost this year. Depends on sourcing the box.
So we haven’t said anything.
Besides, the Kishus aren’t ripe yet.
Aren’t you glad you asked?
Thank you for sticking with us through all our agri-drama. Means a lot.
Jim Churchill and Lisa Brenneis
Churchill Orchard
Hope for the future – mail order Ojai Pixies and Hass avocados in March: We hope you’ll consider trying our first tangerine love, the Ojai Pixie, when the fruit is ready in late March.
We also offer a Party Box – 6 lbs of Pixie tangerines and 4 lbs of our certified organic Hass avocados. It’s a lovely spring treat.