GO BEYOND FOUR SEASONS

EARLY

Yellow and White Peaches
Grown by Nick in Reedley, CA

The first of Nick's Peaches are in. This year, his trees have benefitted from heavy winter and spring rains, followed by a warm April, providing us with bountiful harvests earlier than in years past. They have higher acidity in their early season; expect sweetness to increase with warmer temperatures, which will max out sugars in the fruit.

Nick’s season is a carefully choreographed series of ripening, with each of his 100 varieties only ripe for ten days at the most. While most commercial growers select varieties that are consistent in size and transport well, all he cares about is how flavorful the fruit is, sometimes selecting fruit that other growers forgo as terrible due to russeting and scarring.

Nick’s pursuit of flavor does not stop at varietal selection. He goes the extra step of thinning his trees, sometimes up to 90% of the fruit. By thinning his plants, the remaining fruits do not have to compete so tightly for nutrients, allowing each to reach its full flavor potential. Each tree has a potential sugar level that it divides between its fruits — the fewer on the branch, the higher the sugar concentration in each fruit.

LATE

Ramps
Foraged by Rick in New York

Ramps from Rick are in their final days, though they look and taste exceptional, with intense allium flavor and vibrant leaves. As the days grow warmer, the bulbs become too large, growing woody, and the tips of the leaves turn yellow. We turn to a team of foragers in northern Vermont, whose late-ripening patches will extend our season by two weeks.
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Ramps are frost-hardy spring ephemerals with a very short growing season. Their leaves are out for 4-9 weeks each year. Rick carefully maps each patch and rotates his harvest spots throughout spring — letting every site rest for years between picks so the ramps can multiply and regrow. He forages only with permission from private landowners and pulls only at peak maturity.