Many of you are new to Churchill Orchard and our little deal – let us introduce ourselves.
We specialize in seasonal citrus and avocado varieties, which means our offerings change as things come into season.
We’re getting ready for our 2022 season.
Our mail order program runs January through May, and our offerings generally run as follows:
Kishus open for orders in late January
Yes, Kishus are coming. We have an ample crop this year.We hope to start shipping in late January, but the fruit makes the final call. We will email everybody on our mailing list when ordering opens.
Our webstore only accepts orders in season. We leave the items up all year long so you can see what we sell, but the store is “closed” most of the year. When you see “Add to Cart” on an item that means it’s available.
Orders will be shipped in the order received. We pick and pack by hand, and our weekly mail order output is about 2000 lbs per week (there are a lot of Kishus in a pound).
It’s a good idea to get your order in sooner – it helps us to have a couple of weeks of lead time to process your orders and respond to your queries.
We usually manage to ship for 4 weeks. If we still have fruit after the first round, we’ll keep shipping – as long as the fruit and the weather hold.
Visit the Kishu Mandarin product page at our webstore.
Farmers Market Mix Box in late February
We’re staying out of the Berkeley farmers market again this year.We’re short-staffed in Ojai, so something had to give.
We have a nice selection of fruit that we would have sold in the Berkeley market; we had good results last year offering our Berkeley range of citrus and avocados nationwide via our webstore.
So let’s do it again.
Here’s our Farmers Market Mix box offering:
3 lbs of our own Fuerte avocados, 3 lbs of Page tangerines,
2 lbs of our legendary Kishu mandarins, & 1 lb tree-ripe seedless Bearss lime
Nine pounds of gorgeous organic fruit – direct from our grove to your door!
We ship the avocados and citrus fresh picked, so the avocados will arrive still firm but half-ripe. Enjoy your citrus for a few days while your avocados become soft and ready to eat.
Check out the Farmers Market Mix Box in our webstore,
Seedless Kishu: This tiny heirloom mandarin, originally from China by way of Japan, is our earliest-season mandarin. Kishus are totally seedless, deliciously sweet and super-easy to peel.
Page: Deep, intense flavor which matches deep, intense rind and flesh color. Few seeds. Difficult to peel, but Page lovers cut wedges to eat or make juice. Chefs love Pages for frozen desserts because the intensity of flavor stands up to freezing and sugar.
Bearss Lime: Yellowy-green, juicy, and seedless, tree-ripe Bearss limes are a revelation.We allow our Bearss limes to get ripe on the tree, and the difference is astounding! Flavor, rind perfume, and juiciness abound.
Fuerte avocado: Before the Hass took over, this was the gold standard.Green-skinned, pear-shaped, rich and creamy. Harder to ship in bulk because of their thin skin, you won’t see Fuertes often in the stores. Our favorite avocado.
Read about our fruit varieties on tangerineman.com
Pixies and Hass Avocados in late March
Jim’s first tangerine love, the Ojai Pixie, returns in late March.Our certified organic Ojai Pixie tangerines are simply delicious—sweet, easy to peel, and absolutely seedless. Pixies store very well and retain excellent flavor for a remarkably long time. We ship Pixies in 9 and 25-lb sizes.
When the Hass are ready, we will start shipping our wildly popular Pixie Party Box – 6 lbs of our certified organic Pixie tangerines and 3 lbs of our certified organic Hass avocados. It’s a lovely spring treat. We’ll also offer 9-lb boxes of just Hass.
We ship the Hass avocados and the Pixies fresh picked, so the avocados will arrive still firm but half-ripe. Enjoy your Pixies for a few days while your avocados become soft and ready to eat.
Go to our webstore and check out our Pixies and avocados.
The Ojai Spring Fling Returns in April
In April, when our Oro Blancos are ready, it’s time to launch the Spring Fling. As we did last year, we’ll ship a 25 lb carton, and a Little Spring Fling – a 9 lb box.Juicy spring citrus in two sizes!
The Spring Fling comes with a colorful insert card featuring custom cocktail recipes using these delicious citrus treats.
Go to our webstore and check out our Pixies, Spring Fling, and cocktail recipes.
The Big Spring Fling Party Box – a dozen Oro Blancos with eight pounds of Pixies and four Vanilla Blood oranges.
Oro Blanco is a fabulous California hybrid – like grapefruit with the sugar built in. Vanilla Blood is an exotic low-acid supersweet blood orange. Pixies are in peak season in April – sweet, seedless easy to peel, and full of Ojai flavor.
The past couple of winters have been kinda unpredictable – and here we are, predicting again.
We are very grateful to you for your continued appreciation and support of our fruit.
We invite you to visit our web site where we will offer delightful TMI.
Jim Churchill & Lisa Brenneis
Churchill Orchard in the Ojai Valley