Covid 19

As a supplier of fresh citrus, we here at Gillette Citrus are working day and night to supply oranges to all of our customers.  As always, we are following all USDA the CDC guidelines to keep our product and employees safe.  We thank our employees for continuing to come to work in these trying times and our promise to them is to keep our facilities clean and sanitized and to provide the safest workplace possible.

As an essential business supplying agricultural products, we are doing our best to keep up with demand.  Our sales team at Sunkist is providing all the essential harvesting and packing supplies and providing guidance on CDC protocols during this time of Covid 19.

We wish for everyone to be safe and healthy and we will get through this crisis together (just at least six feet apart) :)

Farm to Table

Last week we hosted a Farm to Table event in our orchards.  The focus was on Sunkist blood and cara cara oranges.

We hosted food editors and writers from all over the U.S.  We tour the orchards and then were treated to an amazing brunch featuring bloods and cara cara recipes prepare by two Top Chefs from the tv show Top Chef, Chef Bruce and Chef Sally.

Mark, past Chairman of Sunkist and current Vice-Chairman of Sunkist, gave the tour and talked about farming practices while his daughter Melissa (a 5th generation citrus grower) talked about her life growing up in a citrus orchard and her current role with Gillette Citrus.

The day finished with a tour of our packing faciltiy by led by Mark's son Greg.  Thank you to everyone at Sunkist for organizing this great event and to our guests who traveled from as far away as Maine and New York to visit and learn more about what it takes to grow and ship quality Sunkist fruit.

And we're off.....

We have begun harvest and packing of the 2019-20 navels.  The fruit was one week later in maturity than last year mainly due to the brix-acid ratio.  We are seeing better brix levels than last year but are also seeing a higher acid content which has delayed the start of harvest compared to last season.  This higher brix is a good sign that we will have a great eating piece of fruit, as a higher acid level helps bring out that delicious navel flavor california oranges are known for.  Fruit size is also better than last season by at least one size.  Stay tuned....

new season 2019-2020

As we are finishing uo on the 2019 valencia crop, it is time to look forward to the 2019-20 season.  The current crop has a definately better feel than this best season in that the summer was more mild and the fruit size looks better.  The fruit set does not look as much as this past season, with the fruit possibly one size larger than last year; however, one size larger improvement will propably give us the same number of packed cartons as this previous season.

Fruit quality also looks very good for this new season with little insect damage and good fruit shape.  We are seeing a little more wind scar in those wind prone areas, but overall, very nice quality.  

It is hard to tell when this season will get started, but if we follow the grapes and stone fruit, it will be a little later than last year, but still towards the end of October.

2018-19 season

I did not think we could see so much difference from one season to another. With last year’s short crop, large sizes and a strong export market versus this season of a huge crop of very small sizes and a limited export market due to tariffs in China

With our navels, caras, mandarins and bloods complete for the season we are all taking a huge breath to recover from a very hard season of low pricing.  Most growers will only see less returns per acre and not realize the amazing amount of time and effort our group put in to move through this crop of small, non holding fruit.

A big thank you goes out to all the employees of Gillette Citrus for their tireless work moving through this crop and to our growers for trusting us with the many crazy ideas we had to move as much of this crop as fast as we could

We are very happy with our returns on a competitive basis, and although not near last year’s returns they are much better than our competition.

We would also like to thank our domestic and export customers who helped us move through this demanding crop.

Farming is never easy but for sure it is not boring.  We will see how the Valencia crop finishes up and pray for a good set of large fruit for next season