This was shared to me earlier by Harvey Correia and wanted to pass along this important information to fellow rare fruit growers and lovers... Joe
WHAT'S NEW
Olivia Wu, Karola Saekel
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Andrea Tran, 36, has the most winsome smile of any farmer at the Saturday Alemany Farmers' Market. Which is unusual for a woman who holds at least two jobs -- as a software engineer and a grower of tropical fruits -- and who drives from Palmdale to San Francisco every weekend.
Tran inherited Family Fruit Farm in Southern California, from her parents. The family emigrated from Vietnam in 1975.
Since late April, and through the summer, she has been selling the most aromatic, floral jackfruit, with dense coral-golden tones, that I have had, including those from my hometown, Bangkok. The fruit, about the size of a 20-pound sack of potatoes, is beautiful to behold.
Tran's smile and cheerful refrain is the trademark I've come to know.
"You want to eat it today, tomorrow or in two days," she will say about her Hass avocados. That's the kind of care and precision she brings to orcharding.
In the beginning, her parents' longing for the tropical fruits of South Vietnam led to buying 1 1/2 acres, which they planted with avocados and cherimoyas.
"In the '70s, there were no Asians and no Asian fruit," she says. Those acres grew to 40 with thousands of trees. She now sells cherimoya, guava, mango, longan, lychee, papaya, coconut, tiny bananas and durian.
It's a treat to have non-imported tropical fruits so many times sweeter and more fragrant than one usually finds. From now on through the summer is her prime season, a paradise for those who miss the fruits of the tropics.
The Trans planted jackfruit trees in the 1980s to buffer the winds that were whipping their guava trees. They now have 13 productive trees, whose fruits range from 17 pounds each to 65 pounds. Tran sells the pineapple-jasmine- flavored, chewy fruit at $4.50 a pound, whacking off chunks with a big knife. She'll give you a taste or tell you how to eat them -- always with a smile. She even smiles when she tells you she's sold out, often by 10 a.m.
Alemany Farmers' Market, at the junction of highways 101 and 280, is open Saturdays from dawn until dusk. Visit
http://www.sfgov.org/alemany for more information.
The Alemany market is in the Bay Area where the Trans travel from Palmdale to this Farmer's market to sell their fruits.
But the location in the southern California can be found here:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hl=en&q=36850+E.+92nd+St.,Littlerock,+CA+93543
with a phone number of 661-944-4667.
