Time for Tangerines & Naval Oranges
 

As the snow piles up and gets plowed away by snow tractors.
Its time in California for my favorite type of tractor, the blue Ford orchard tractor with the narrow front track and full skirts that cover the rear wheels.
Its almost peak harvest time for both fruits and the memories of hanging around at the citrus packing plant as a kid are precious. Driving around on fork lifts with the guys and climbing around RR cars as a six year old would get my parents a visit from CPS today. I survived just fine and learned early what it meant to work. Also learned my 1st Spanish curse words there too
.
My tress are around 15 years old and are in their prime years.
I got boxes of free fruit out front.
My Naval Orange Tree is a descendant of the 1st California Naval Orange Tree of 1873, I bought it in Riverside CA from the U of Riverside AG dept.

Here's the story of the Naval Orange.

https://culinarylore.com/food-history:how-did-the-navel-orange-originate/#:~:text=The%20exact%20origin%20of%20the%20navel%2 0orange%20is,a%20laranja%20selecta%20orange%20tree %20sometime%20around%201820.

Wow, very cool!

My uncle was in the fruit business his whole life. His dad worked in the citrus industry, and he told me that when he was 6 and out of school for the summer, his dad would take him and a buddy to the packing plants where they got paid something like a nickel a day to fix the broken packing crates. He retired from Seald Sweet. He also worked for, IIRC, the US Dept of Ag doing inspections around the US. He's told me some interesting stories.

I'm waiting for the Sumo orange season!

Fresh squeezed orange juice, now that’s the dream!

I was in CA for the first time in my life over ten years ago and I exclaimed to my friends how great it was that the hotel restaurant had fresh squeezed... their response, it’s California everywhere has fresh squeezed!

Hard to find in MN.

i eat those while i wait for Sumo Oranges to come out. gives me time to save up $$ for the Sumos :D

separated at birth!! clearly.

Fresh OJ is one of my all-time favorite drinks. A chilled glass full on a warm summer day is hard to beat.

A couple of local supermarkets bottle their own and usually have it year 'round. I can also buy a bag of Valencia oranges and juice them myself...doesn't get any fresher than that :cool:

All the best apples are coming around now too. These are my current favorites... http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1765243864.jpg

I grew up in Riverside and life still revolved around citrus in the 1960s. The smell of smudge pots on cold winter mornings and a dark haze hanging in the sky, fresh tangerines in my Christmas stocking. Harvest season was long from Nov-May with peak harvest for the best Washington Navel oranges late February. Rail cars loaded with orange crates would get huge blocks of ice slid in under the fruit from the Riverside Ice Plant for the long trip back east. April meant the scent of orange blossoms in the air, especially in the evening up in the canyons.

Our house had a tangerine tree, two Washington Navel orange, and kumquat.

Good times.

Hell yeah! I'm from Florida originally, so probably have orange juice in my blood. Sumos are the BEST!

Between mom and her neighbor there were a total of 70 different citrus trees.... sadly a blight hit about 4 years ago and took out almost all of 'em.

Wife never had fresh squeezed OJ until she went to my parent's house.

I have purchased and planted citrus trees for a fair number of folks

Same here in Florida

Really got me when my yamkee relations tried giving me Sunny Delight. Not sure what that stuff is but fresh squeezed on it aint!

Don't forget the citrus trees that have been grafted to produce several different kinds of fruits!

My uncle had a tree that bore 15 different citrus fruits. His last boss before he retired had a tree that bore 31 different citrus fruits.

My favorite our Satsuma tangerine, also have a Blood orange tree.
As a kid our grandparents stuffed the Christmas stockings with Satsuma tangerines.

We have a yellow peach/nectarine tree that had 4 grafts but only 2 grafts have been productive.

Not citrus...but I planted a 4-kinds cherry tree a couple years ago. I could potentially see fruit from it starting next year...we're pretty excited!

Where I live in AZ, we're a touch too cold for citrus but our pear and peach trees do great.

The network of RR tracks between all the packing houses was a local highway for our mini bikes and motorcycles too. Frozen Orange drinks sold at home stands were a common thing, Then along came the Orange Julius drink. A lot of those railway right of ways became bike paths, some are still abandoned.

Here is a link to some Orange box label artwork which are a valuable collectible today.

https://www.californiabountiful.com/magazine-features/magazine-issues/novemberdecember-2019/vintage-fruit-crate-labels-inspire-massive-collection/

Citrus fruit from SoCal was a national treasure in the US around 1900 and really put us on the map, bringing a lot of prosperity, new rail lines, and eventually highways throughout SoCal. Back then, people across the country would wait in line for rail cars to be unloaded so they could purchase a crate of oranges, lemons, or tangerines as if it were a Black Friday sale.

Today with modern transportation, citrus fruit is in every supermarket and often taken for granted. I still buy a bag of oranges or tangerines nearly every shopping visit. The taste of my childhood.

Speaking of citrus - my Meyer Lemon Tree is covered this year

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1765401825.jpg

I was going to buy some while shopping the other day but bought clementines because I hate peeling oranges.

That's part of the reason that I LOVE Sumos.

Sumo oranges
Pros
1) Super easy to peel
2) taste like heaven
Cons
1) Only available in a very short season
2) Kind of pricey (but so worth it)