Apricots and Blueberries

We got the opportunity to tour two fantastic family fruit farms while we were in the San Joaquin Valley last week. 

First up:  Friesen Family Farms, Kingsburg, CA

Our friends the Hansens discovered this gem of a fruit stand several years ago, and now whenever any of our local  friends are driving along Highway 99, we usually stop by and buy 1, 2 or 5 boxes of “seconds fruit” – which means it’s perfectly good fruit that has a slight blemish on it. Best tasting stone fruit around!  Plums, apricots, peaches, and nectarines in so many varieties.  We learned that they also grow and sell kiwi fruit in the fall season.  Paula Friesen runs the “seconds” fruit stand – you get a boat load of fruit for super cheap! – and she gave us a tour of their processing plant.  We watched the fruit roll in and off the tractor trailers, then get dumped into sorters and boxed up for cold storage.

Paula recommended we also visit a berry farm “just around the block/acre” from them – another gem!

Royal Dawn Berry Farm – wonderful blue berries and black berries! We left there with purple fingertips and tongues.

Blueberries for Josh:

Doesn’t Kingsburg have the sweetest water tower??

I took my family to one of my favorite Visalia meals… Taylor’s Hot Dogs. This super small red and white hot dog stand is in the parking lot of our church, and I was at church a LOT for bell choir practice, youth group, etc.  So it was the perfect meal/snack.  The dogs used to cost just $.60 but now they’re a buck more, ouch.

So funny as we were getting hot dogs, one of the employees preparing the chili dogs turned around and said… I thought that was YOU, Wendi!?  Totally caught me off guard.  Turns out it was a guy I babysat way back in the day, good friends from church.  So fun to bump into Stephen Butterfield!

Now I’m off to make one huge fruit salad!