San Juan Capistrano is home to South Coast Farm. It is a place where fruit and vegetable experts of all ages come to buy fresh produce. We consider ourselves experts because we have been eating fresh fruits most of our lives. Southern California offers many opportunities for the public to harvest and buy their own fruit and vegetables from local neighborhood farms. On a recent visit to South Coast Farm, we found beautiful onions growing near a berry bush and an 80-year-old fig tree. Something you might see in a big city all the time.
We ran through the farm fields and noticed how the dirt, the fruits, and vegetables gave off a flavorful aroma. It appears that fresh produce does have a fragrance. It smells like fresh cut grass and fresh rain. Dependent on the farm, you can smell the strawberries growing from blocks away. One of my kids said that it smelled like earth on a good day.
South Coast Farm in San Juan Capistrano grows berries, tomatoes, peaches, fennel, onions, basil, and figs. Their main crop is strawberries where you can harvest yourself at $2.99 per pound. As we explored their place, we noticed the beauty of growing crops. Each plant was more beautiful than the next. The basil plants spoke to us in a very aromatic way. Our noses led us to where they resided. Both kids were surprised at how much they liked basil nearly immediately based on the aroma. We then ran into Fennel, which is a bush like a root vegetable. It was the first time we had the pleasure of seeing it grow from under the ground.
After we finished picking our strawberries, we visited the store to pay for our harvest. It was filled with on-site grown fruits and veggies for sale. The farm offered other organic products such as ginger, radishes, cilantro, citrus, and squash. Produce is picked for sale the same day, which means you get the freshest pick of the crop that day.
We want to invite you to visit your local farm and support them. The prices sometimes are not the best deal in town however you must remember the following. The product is always premium quality, freshly picked and vine-ripened versus picked two weeks ahead of schedule and ripened in cardboard crates while being imported from Ecuador. You can find a local farm by visiting the pick your own website at:
http://www.pickyourown.org/CAorange.htm
http://www.pickyourown.org/CAorange.htm
Southern California offers several farms that you will enjoy visiting. Here is the list of the farms that we have visited.
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