Oranges

We saw orange and grapefruit trees when we were in Florida. We stopped at a fruit farm that had a store, and they gave samples of their Valencia Oranges which are in season now and their pink grapefruit. They were delicious! They had a shipping department, that fruit could be shipped, so of course, you know I just had to do that! My box of ½ Valencia oranges and ½ pink grapefruit are due to arrive on Friday, and I can’t wait! While I was filling out the form, my husband was hovering over my shoulder, and I asked him to go look around the store. The reason, you ask? Well, I wanted to ship some to our daughter and her family, and I knew with the prices, he would probably have said not to, but you know how us Mother’s are. We think of our kids! He came back as the cashier was ringing everything up, looked at the slip and said “oh, I see why you wanted me to go look around, us husbands aren’t so dumb, I figured something was up!” All three of us laughed! He really didn’t mind, I think sometimes us wives worry about stuff like that more than we should.

Sarasota is home to the Tropicana Corporation, where all our good Tropicana orange juice comes from.

Here are photos of the fruit store and orange groves. The farm gives tours, but we didn’t take time to do a tour. Besides, I am from a big fruit county in Pennsylvania, Adams County. We have lots of apple, peach and cherry orchards in Adams County. I’m sure an orange grove would be much the same as an apple orchard. Speaking of orchards, when we were growing up, two summers my Dad and us kids picked cherries for money. My Dad had two cousins in the fruit business, and we picked cherries at his cousin Johnny Masemer’s orchards. If I remember correctly, I think we got 30 cents a bucket. Johnny would periodically set off "cherry bombs" to scare the birds away from the trees. I especially remember those, and the ladders, the fun we had with the others who were picking in the trees next to us. We had so much fun, lots of good memories of our "cherry picking" days!