We’ve heard from a number of Kishu customers and prospective customers who missed the window for Kishu ordering this year.

We sent the Kishu email alert at 8:30 am Saturday Jan 22 – and sold through 4 weeks of 2022 season Kishus by 1:30 pm.
We were caught by surprise.

Our fruit sold with astonishing speed.
If only we could grow, harvest and pack it as fast.

We will be shipping different (and delicious), fruit later in the season. Please keep an open mind to our organic Pixie tangerines, avocados, our Pages and our Oro Blanco grapefruits.

We’re not Amazon, nor the CDC — it’s just us, trying to implement a scheme that would distribute not enough fruit to too many customers.

First, we wanted to explain why we must limit our Kishu mail order supply:

Mail order Kishus are delivered on a tight and inflexible schedule.
They are slower to pack, and we often ship into serious winter weather.
We can’t sell our whole crop mailorder; we can only ship Monday and Tuesday, and we need our small crew to keep packing all week, because Kishus don’t hold on the trees, (like Pixies do).

How should we distribute the mail order Kishus we have?

Raising the price until demand falls off is not why we farm, nor who we are.
We don’t want our customer base restricted to people who can afford $300 — or $3000 — for a 9-pound box of Kishus.
We recognize that the price is already high for most people, but our pricing is tied to the cost to grow, pick and pack a small fruit that must be processed by hand, and not on a machine.

First come, first served would be most fair – many customers have asked to be “put on the waiting list” —  but does not work for Kishus.
We don’t know until harvest time how much fruit we’re able to supply –

It’s not just whether the crop survives the winter freeze, winds, and storms.
The cost of living and housing in Ojai CA has made it hard for us to find people to work in our packing operation, so the size of our staff is unknown until it’s time to open.

We’ve learned from experience that taking mail orders too far in advance can be expensive for us. Sometimes Nature has other plans for our crop, and refunding orders actually costs us money.
So we wait until we have a reasonable chance of delivering. And then we “alert” you by sending out an email.

We started selling Kishus through our online store back in 2009 and we’ve seen brisk sales before, but things have really mushroomed since the pandemic started.
Which is great for our little business, and we’re excited to try and keep up with demand.

We do have other lovely varieties coming up that don’t sell out immediately.

Thank you so very much for your interest in our fruit and for your support.

It means a lot to us.

Packing Kishus by hand in the barn Jan 2022.