Monday, February 7, 2011

Farm Focus: Four Sisters' Kiwis



"Plain and brown on the outside, emerald green on the inside, kiwis are the geodes of the fruit world. The sweet gems make their appearance at California farmers’ markets just in the nick of time –- right when the pomegranate and persimmon seasons have faded and committed locavores have prepared themselves for several puckered months of citrus eating."

I love that ode to the kiwi, courtesy of CUESA (they run the Ferry Building farmers' markets.) They wrote a nice feature about kiwis and the folks around here that grow them.

Before I ever thought of making kiwi-lime jam, Four Sisters Farm made me a kiwi lover. Until I moved to California, I could take them or leave them. But much like Ecuador totally redefined my definition of a good banana, I found that local kiwis are another (miraculous) thing altogether.

And they taught me the secret of the long kiwi season, which came in handy when a friend gave us some rock-hard kiwis recently!

Nancy and Robin Gammons of Four Sisters Farm, who have been growing organic kiwis since 1978, also benefit from the ability to store kiwis or ripen them at will. Before bringing a batch to the market, the Gammonses move them to a special storage unit that also contains their farm’s apples, a natural source of a ripening agent called ethylene gas. (Conventional kiwi farms use synthetic ethylene.)”