Harvest

Orange are ripe at the same time as next year’s crop is in full bloom.

Tiny oranges form at the base of the blossom as the petals fall away.

Oranges take a full year from blossom to harvest.

  • At Stull Ranches, our citrus are sold by contracting with a packing house who comes in, picks, packs and sells our fruit.

 

  • The contract company brings in their equipment and people, pick the oranges, and transport them to the packing house where the fruit is sorted, packed and sold. The packing house then takes their cut for their services, and Stull Ranches gets the pre-calculated per-bin price.

 

  • At the picking process all that is known is how many bins each type of orange produced. One year it could be 900; another year it could be 1900. It is not unusual to have a cyclic years of heavy and light years. The crops are not the same every year, and the market determines the per-bin price.

 

  • The size of the fruit depends on how much fruit is on the tree. The more fruit, the smaller the oranges. The less fruit, the larger the fruit.

I like to peel it and share it with friends. You can spread the love with an orange.

–Gina Rodriguez