Let the Insanity Begin…

Yesterday, Saturday, was the first official day of apricot jam production for us and is the beginning of a 30-day, insane, Herculean process we have founded this business on.

It started on Friday at 5 a.m., after only four hours of sleep, labeling 650 jars of bbq we had spent the prior day making. While we make the jam, we don’t do anything else and since bbq sauce is so popular in the summer, we spend a lot of time just before jam season to make enough to last the month of July. In years past we were always busy getting ready for jam and would forget to make any bbq sauce and then stores would run out. Our customers who like the bbq sauce get very mad when they can’t get their fix so now we are more organized and considerate!

In total we had to make about 300 gallons in a week since like usual everything happens at the last minute. Several stores paid us late and since we needed the money to buy the ingredients and glass and labels for the bbq, by the time we got paid we just had a few days to make everything. Welcome to our world…

By 6:30 the labels were on and all the cases of bbq had been packed and ready for pickup by our distributor later in the day. We used to deliver direct to stores with our car but we opted for a distributor so we have more time to make stuff. We never know when they will come. So our reasoning was if we get back from the farm with the apricots by 11 a.m. we should be there for them to pick up. Hopefully…

An hour later we are on the road in a rental van en route to Gilroy to pick up our first batch of apricots. We get our fruit exclusively from Van Dyke Ranch. A few days before we had visited the farm to talk about the fruit and how we wanted it picked. In prior years we would get the fruit picked straight from the trees and put in 40 lb wood crates. However the past few years we got a lot of fruit that either was too ripe or not ripe enough and a lot was wasted. This year we did what we did our first year, had them sort the fruit that was picked and put into 20 lb cardboard flats. This way we get fruit just the way we want it with less time sorting. It cost more money but it saves time. And when you have thousands of pounds of apricots that last only a few weeks in the refrigerator, and it is basically just the two of us washing and pitting the fruit, time is of essence. The lighter boxes also save our backs somewhat.

Gilroy is known as the garlic capitol, but we know of it just for apricots. As we approach the farm we see people with ladders picking apricots. This is a brutal job climbing trees and risking punctures and cuts from branches. The sun is intense so workers cover up for protection making this a very hot job. Temperatures this time of year can be in the high 90s.

When we arrive,  farm it was buzzing with activity. There is a large open shed where the freshly picked apricots are being sorted and some are being pitted and cut and put on wooden trays to be sun dried. In recent years more of the fresh apricots are being sold to local supermarkets. In prior years they were either sun dried to sold to packers who canned the fruit.

Due to more rain than normal and cooler temperatures, there was less fruit this year. Our own little backyard tree had about half the fruit it normally does. But the fruit this year is beautiful. As we get out of the van the air is rich with the intoxicating smell of fresh apricots.

Roberto the foreman pulled the initial 1500 lbs of apricots we ordered from a large cooler which is basically a refrigerated truck container set right on the ground. They are perfect!  Luckily the van was big enough for the pallet to be loaded in. In years past we used our car and would load up about 400 lbs every other day. It was a lot of driving and lifting and every summer we hurt our backs. We are getting smarter. Here are our apricots being loaded into the van and is the only picture we took explaining why there are no others…

Just our luck halfway back to San Francisco we get a call from our distributor wondering where we are. We ask if they can come back in 30 minutes and they promise they will. Sometimes they cannot and we have to reschedule for another day. But 4th of July weekend is popular for bbq and we want to make sure they can pick up.
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We have a customer from one of the farmers’ markets we do who makes sun jam. This is an old fashioned style of partially heating fruit and sugar in a pot, but then pouring it into jars and letting it sit and continue to cook slowly in the sun. For months she has been asking us if we can get her some fruit. Luckily we remembered and have 35 lbs of very ripe fruit for her. She agreed to meet us for a pickup – just like a drug deal!

As we pull into the driveway we see her anxiously waiting. A quick exchange of cash for cots and she hurries home to make her jam and we begin unloading all our fruit. Our distributor is no where to be seen. We don’t have the luxury of a forklift so we have to case-by-case unload all the fruit from the van and carry it to our tiny refrigerator that hopefully it will just fit into. An hour later it is full and we are exhausted.

Then our distributor shows up finally and takes away the bbq sauce.  Dead tried with just four hours of sleep and all the manual labor, we go home and rest.

The following morning which was yesterday, was the first day of making jam. The fruit was late this year, so normally we start June 27-30, so this is the latest we have ever started, July 3.

We dump a few boxes of fruit into a big sink and wash the fruit several times. We drain the water and then standing over the sink pick out an apricot, inspect to see if it is OK, and then give it a good twist to split it in half. We remove the pit and toss the two pieces of fruit into a bucket. It takes the two of us about an hour to do about 6 boxes, or 120 lbs if we work fast enough.

A few hours into doing this your feet start to ache, your back starts to hurt, your fingers and arms get tired and your eyes get bleary. The repetitive bending over the sink picking out apricots is probably the equivalent of doing about several thousand stomach crunches. After a few days our hands will be stained orange. But like starting to work out after a long absence, with the initial soreness, within a week our bodies will be primed and conditioned and we will be able to ignore the pain somewhat.

Once we have enough of the fruit we inspect it again to make sure there are no pits we missed. Then we weigh the fruit, dump it in the pot with the correct amount of sugar and start making jam. Usually in a day if all goes well we do two batches, but with less sorting we hope to do three batches. From beginning to end, from bulk fruit in the boxes to it in the jars,  it takes us 3-4 hours per batch. Add in about 30 days of this and we will have made all the jam for the year. Words cannot express the exhaustion we will feel, but also the amazing sense of accomplishment.

Then we have the plum jams to make…

And to make matters worse, we cannot accept help from the legions of customers and people who have offered to help us out for free. Everything we do is special and we are very secretive about our recipes and processes – just like most companies.

A famous local chocolate company, Sees Candy, does not allow anyone to see how they make their candy. A friend of ours, David Lebovitz, when he was working on his The Great Book of Chocolate, called and asked if he could visit them and talk about chocolate. They said he could not see the chocolate making operations. And while being rejected like this is painful and annoying, on the flip side, companies, whether they are Sees or a tiny little setup like us, have invested a lot of money into their business and are careful to protect it. This is not to say we don’t trust people, but it is much easier to keep things among a select group of people we know. So, as much as we would simply LOVE to have the help, and trust us, we would LOVE it so much, from a professional perspective, we are sticking to our guns and keeping our secrets to ourselves so you can always enjoy what we make!